“We were convinced of the justice of our cause, convinced that even dying was a small matter compared with the privilege we now shared of fighting for that cause,” wrote Margaret Skinnider in her 1917 account of the Rising, Doing My Bit For Ireland.

Born to Irish parents in the Scottish town of Coatbridge in 1893, Skinnider was a mathematics teacher who joined Cumann na mBan while in Glasgow, learning to shoot in a rifle club, ostensibly so she could help defend the British Empire. “I kept on till I was a good marksman,” she wrote, “I believed the opportunity would soon come to defend my own country.”

In the months prior to the Rising she smuggled detonators and bomb-making equipment to Ireland, moving there and lodging with Countess Markiewicz a week before the rebellion. When the Rising began, Skinnider was attached to Michael Mallin and Countess Markiewicz with the Irish Citizen Army at St Stephen’s Green, initially acting as a dispatch-carrier and messenger but eventually being deployed as a sniper on the roof of the College of Surgeons. 

“I slipped into this uniform, climbed up astride the rafters, and was assigned a loophole through which to shoot,” she wrote. “It was dark there, full of smoke and the din of firing, but it was good to be in action. I could look across the tops of trees and see the British soldiers on the roof of the Shelbourne. I could also hear their shot hailing against the roof and wall of our fortress, for in truth this building was just that. More than once I saw the man I aimed at fall.”

Alternating between uniformed sniping and messenger work in her grey dress and hat, she asked at one point to be allowed use her bicycle to get close to the Shelbourne and throw a bomb through a window. Mallin liked the idea, but was loath to have a woman risk her life so. 

“My answer to that argument,” she said, “was that we had the same right to risk our lives as the men; that in the Constitution of the Irish Republic, women were on an equality with men. For the first time in history, indeed, a constitution had been written that incorporated the principle of equal suffrage.”

Appeal

Regardless of Skinnider’s appeal to the Proclamation, Mallin had other plans, entailing the burning of two buildings that would cut off escape routes for British soldiers based in the University Church. Leading a group of four men to do so, Skinnider was shot three times: once in the right arm, once in her right side under her arm, and once in the back. Mallin, she later wrote, could not forgive himself for having sent her “on that errand”. 

Subsequently active in promoting the Republican cause and imprisoned during the War of Independence, Skinnider became Paymaster General of the anti-treaty IRA in the Civil War. 

The Military Pensions Archive reveals her story as having a troubling epilogue, especially given her pride in how the Proclamation placed women on an equal footing with men. On applying for a pension in 1925 based on her service in the revolutionary period, she was refused payment because she was a woman. Despite having served as a uniformed sniper, led men, and been wounded, on legal advice she was told that her application “could not be considered under the act”. Only after repeated requests was she granted a pension in 1938. 

Few of the almost 200 women who participated in the Rising had experiences quite as dramatic as Skinnider’s, though their roles were indispensable during Easter Week. 

That so many women mobilised is remarkable given how the confusion over orders and countermanding orders that afflicted the Volunteers proved at least as detrimental to attempts to raise Cumann na mBan; several women who participated in the Rising later testified to having received their orders on Monday morning, but they may well have been the exception rather than the rule. 

Only one branch of Cumann na mBan managed to mobilise in an even partially effective way, some ending up with the Volunteers at the Marrowbone Lane distillery while others were famously sent home when they attempted to join de Valera’s battalion at Boland’s Mills. Thomas McDonagh at Jacob’s Factory was initially startled by the arrival of a uniformed Máire Nic Shiubhlaing, but after saying they had made no provision for “girls” there, agreed to her suggestion that they set up a kitchen.

Although Ned Daly had told Phyllis Morkan that “if there was going to be fighting, they would need all the women they could get,” he never requested that women from her company join them, and indeed directed those women who were under his command to demobilise on Monday evening. 

Many of those directed to do so refused to stand down, with Leslie Price and Bríd Dixon deciding that they would instead “go down to the centre of the city, see what was going on, and get into any building that was available”. They ended up at the GPO, which drew women who lacked orders, disobeyed orders, or simply wanted to support their comrades; one activist, Cathleen Byrne, kicked her way through a window in order to join the fight. 

Louise Gavan Duffy describes how on arriving there she was taken to see Pearse who was “as calm and courteous as ever”. In hindsight describing her behaviour as “insolent”, she told him that she wanted to be in the field, but that she “felt the rebellion was a frightful mistake, that it could not possibly succeed, and it was, therefore, wrong”. Given her unwillingness to take the sort of active role she would truly have preferred, “he asked me would I like to go to the kitchen”, she said.

Kitchen work, though hardly glamorous and certainly not popularly valourised in the way that frontline combat roles were, was absolutely crucial to the rebels’ effort, and something that had been given little thought in advance by the rebel leaders, suggesting that the rebels had never expected to have to hold their positions for long. 

While the GPO kitchen was well-supplied given how many shops and restaurants were nearby – Clan na Gael’s Mary Cloughlin said “this was the first time I saw a whole salmon cooked laid on a dish” while long afterwards Bridget Foley said she could “still see the vision of the big sides of beef going into the ovens for their lunches” – other garrisons, such as that at St Stephen’s Green, were not so lucky and were forced to improvise or simply to go hungry.

Rose MacNamara, vice-commandant of Cumann na mBan at Marrowbone Lane, later told the Bureau of Military History that on the Tuesday, “Quinn’s bakery cart was held up and some bread captured, also two cans of milk from a passing cart”, with 19 chickens being “captured” from a messenger boy the next day. 

The chickens, she says, made for a “very successful” dinner, though bayonets had to be used to remove them from the pots in which they were cooked, owing to a lack of cutlery. Thursday saw them capturing three live calves, with a Volunteer who was a butcher killing one so it could be used for dinner that evening; Friday morning saw fried veal cutlets on the menu for breakfast, with a meat dinner that evening. Nine live chickens were captured that day, and a “load of cabbage” was taken the next one.

Kept busy

The women at the Four Courts likewise were kept busy feeding the men, Pauline Keating saying that “we busied ourselves mainly with the washing-up and the cooking”, after their discovery on Tuesday evening that, at least as far as Aine Heron could tell, “they had nothing but tea”. 

She described the women who’d been sent there to set up a first-aid post making soup and stew, while Bridget Lyons said “we spent a lot of time making tea and sandwiches”, adding “we cooked joints of meat, tea and fried potatoes for constant relays of men”. 

They stayed there until the end, cooking, tending to the wounded, and, Eilis Ní Riain said, reciting “Rosary after Rosary during the last 24 hours as the British military were closing in”.

As well as catering work, many of the women were allocated medical duties, in a demarcation of roles in line with Pearse’s Tuesday, April 25 call to the citizens of Dublin that “there is work for everyone: for men in the firing line, and for women in the provision of food and first aid”.

Dr Kathleen Lynn at Liberty Hall had made careful preparations for equipping first-aid posts, with the effect that some garrisons were fairly well-supplied with with field and first-aid kits, though little thought was given to how first-aid posts could be situated in rebel positions. 

Aine Heron told the Bureau of Military History of a foiled attempt to set up a first-aid post at Dublin’s Dominican priory on Dominick Street. “The Prior of the monastery was away for the day, and the assistant Prior, who was sympathetic, gave us permission to set up our first-aid post in the priory,” she said. “We were not very long there when we heard the angry voice of the Prior, who had returned earlier than expected and who ordered us to clear out. We hastily and ignominiously retired, I leaving my waterproof coat behind me.” 

By this point on Monday afternoon, she said, “the Rising was in full swing”, yet a group of Cumann na mBan members tasked with setting up a first-aid post “were left without any direction” and “just hung about marking time” until a temporary post was set up in a shop on Church Street. It was not until the following day, after collecting armlets marked with red crosses and first-aid equipment including “a ginger-beer bottle full of iodine”, that the women set off for the Four Courts.

Some first-aid points were especially well run, notably the makeshift hospital in Church Street’s Father Mathew Hall, but others were anything but, with Phyllis Morkan describing how after she and others set up an emergency ward on Church Street, they discovered they lacked stimulants and changes of clothes only whom the first patient presented with gunshot wounds to his face. 

Given permission to visit her home, her family having two public houses, the women went there and over the course of an hour collected “a lot of brandy and whiskey and all the shirts and socks we could lay our hands on”. Obstructed by British troops on the way back, and carrying some ammunition too, the women “never got back to Church Street after that”.

The most dangerous work typically undertaken by women in the Rising was dispatch-carrying, especially important work given how telephone and telegraph wires had been cut and there were no other reliable ways for the various rebel groups to communicate with each other. 

In advance of the rising, Michael Mallin explained to Marie Perolz how she would be needed to act as a dispatch carrier. She felt “very proud”, she said, as he smiled and asked, “Is it dangerous enough for you?” 

With the risks came status: Sean MacDiarmada was so impressed by how effectively Bríd Dixon and Leslie Price maintained links between the GPO and North King Street, where the Volunteers’ First Battalion was headquartered under Ned Daly, that he announced they should be treated as officers and they were promoted on the spot. 

Lacking uniforms, so less obviously identifiable as rebels than the uniformed men, women were in any case thought less likely to be stopped by soldiers or police, or to be fired on, but neither their gender nor their clothing was any guarantee of safety. Leslie Price by her own account almost broke down in tears when Tom Clarke directed her to cross O’Connell Street with a message on the Thursday evening of Easter Week, and when Elizabeth O’Farrell brought a message from Pearse to Colonel Bertram Portal, she was told “you think because you’re a woman you can say what you like; mind you don’t get shot through that little head of yours”.

O’Farrell is one of the women best known for her part in the Rising, having written an unforgettable account of how she was given the job of passing word to the British command that the rebels in the GPO had decided to surrender, subsequently accompanying Pearse as he formally surrendered to General Lowe and then travelling about the city, accompanied by such Capuchins as Frs Columbus Murphy and Augustine Hayden, passing on surrender orders to the other rebel commanders.

She is, however, perhaps better known for how her feet peek into view in the iconic shot of Pearse surrendering to General William Lowe. Often described as “airbrushed” from history, and sometimes said to have been literally airbrushed from some reproductions of the shot, O’Farrell told the Cistercians of Roscrea 40 years later that she had deliberately hid from the camera. When she spotted a British soldier preparing to take the shot she stepped backwards, not wanting to give the British press the satisfaction of linking her with the rebels’ defeat. 

She later came to regret this decision, she said.

For all that he has been described as the creator of modern terrorism, by the time Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa died, he was a spent force, at least in the United States where he lived. “His whole reputation was made in the 1860s,” says Dr Gillian O’Brien, reader in Modern Irish History in Liverpool’s John Moores University. Through his August 1, 1915 funeral, she explains, the old Fenian “became more iconic in death than he had been for many decades in life”.

“The whole funeral was completely stage-managed, primarily by Tom Clarke,” she says, pointing out that as a member of the Irish Republic Brotherhood (IRB) since 1878 and a one-time United States resident who carried an American passport, “he was a bridge between the old Fenians and the new generation as represented by Pearse and also a bridge across the Atlantic.”

In seeing the propaganda potential of O’Donovan Rossa’s death and asking Patrick Pearse to speak at the funeral – he told him to make his speech “as hot as Hell” – Clarke was tapping into an old nationalist tradition whereby funerals could double as political rallies, largely immune from attempts to ban them as partisan gatherings. 

The roots of the tradition began with the Young Irelanders who first consecrated Wolfe Tone’s grave in Bodenstown as the nationalist pilgrimage site it continues to be to this day, Dr O’Brien argues, with Daniel O’Connell’s funeral in August 1847, when tens of thousands lined Dublin’s streets, being the first of Ireland’s great political funerals albeit one somehow distinct from the general tradition.

Tradition

“O’Connell had a massive funeral but no one ever talks of it,” she says, identifying the more obvious start of the tradition as the funeral of Terence Bellew MacManus in 1861. MacManus, she points out, is someone who matters “because of his funeral more than anything else”.

Transported to Australia’s Van Dieman’s Land – now Tasmania – after the failure of the Young Ireland rebellion in 1848, MacManus escaped to the United States in 1852. After his death in San Francisco in 1861, Dr O’Brien explains, the Fenians realised he could serve the nationalist cause in death. As his body was brought back to Ireland through America, it stopped along the way in various places, with the stops being used to raise money for the movement.

When his remains finally reached Ireland, they were brought by train from Cobh to Dublin. In Dublin a procession from the Mechanics’ Institute on Abbey Street took MacManus’s bier past such nationalist shrines as the spots where Robert Emmet was executed in 1803 and where Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been shot in 1798, before being buried in the Young Irelanders’ plot at Glasnevin Cemetery after a stirring graveside oration written by the IRB’s James Stephens.

The nationalist writer A.M. Sullivan, then opposed to the Fenians, subsequently described the funeral as “the greatest ever witnessed upon Earth”, continuing, “those who saw the gathering that followed his coffin to the grave, the thousands of stalwart men that marched in solemn order behind his bier, will never forget the sight”. 

The execution of the “Manchester Martyrs” in 1867 provided an opportunity for further Fenian commemorations, including mock funerals across Ireland, and a similar ceremony to that for MacManus marked the funeral of the Fenian co-founder John O’Mahony in 1877. An estimated 20,000 turned out in his honour in New York and a further 70,000, by police estimates, watched the 4,000-strong procession to his grave in Dublin. As a graveside oration was forbidden, the Fenian writer Charles Kickham spoke in honour of O’Mahony outside the cemetery gates. 

Ecclesiastical attempts to restrain such political funerals, tied with general clerical opposition to the IRB as an oath-bound secret society, did little to limit the popularity and success of the Fenian project to transform their dead into political martyrs to be venerated as part of Ireland’s nationalist pantheon, in their hope that their blood would become, to paraphrase Tertullian, the seed of independence.

Parnell’s funeral fitted awkwardly into this tradition, Dr O’Brien observes, describing how “all sorts of people” turned out among the more than 200,000 thought to have attended. “In death all bets are off,” she explains, speculating that some measure of guilt may have motivated many of those attending, as the nationalist leader’s death in 1891 at the age of 45, so soon after the Irish National Party had split over his relationship with Catherine O’Shea, meant that he never had the chance to be rehabilitated.

Remains

By the time O’Donovan Rossa died in 1915, the Fenians were masters of political funerals and the Church had realised that trying to stop them was counter-productive. When O’Donovan Rossa’s remains arrived in Dublin on July 27, 1915, they were taken to the pro-cathedral for a memorial service – an honour denied MacManus and O’Mahony – before being taken to City Hall to lie in state for three days. 

Contemporary accounts reckoned that about 200,000 people lined the streets of Dublin during his procession from City Hall to Glasnevin, Dr O’Brien says, pointing out that while O’Donovan Rossa’s glory days in America had long passed, he was still well known in Ireland as someone who “had been treated appallingly in the 1860s”, and for “his activism and involvement in the skirmishing and dynamiting campaign” in the 1880s. 

In stage-managing the funeral, she explains, Clarke chose Pearse to give the graveside oration not merely because of his oratorical gifts but because of his youth. “Pearse as new generation is key,” she says, “and he acknowledges this in the speech, highlighting how rather than being someone who knew O’Donovan Rossa – he refers to them as ‘the grey-haired men who were young with him’ – he represents the new generation.”

Continuity was a central theme in Pearse’s speech, Dr O’Brien points out, saying that Pearse was trying to convey how his generation were standing on the shoulders of giants, sharing the same definition of freedom understood by the United Irishmen, the Young Irelanders, and the Fenians.

“Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name and definition than their name and their definition,” he said, using a distinctive phrase that he would revive when proclaiming Ireland a Republic the following year “in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood”.

Determined to deny the rebels a succession of posthumous propaganda parades, one of the few prudent decisions the British made in the aftermath of the Rising was to order the bodies of Pearse, Clarke and the others be dumped in a common grave at Arbour Hill prison and covered in quicklime to speed their decomposition.  

Ultimately this proved for nothing, however; in the absence of orchestrated propagandist funerals, requiem and month’s mind Masses provided opportunities for popular sympathy for the rebels to rear its head and blossom. 

In the opening lines of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s memoirs, the former Archbishop of Westminster recalls a stone he came across on a small island in the Outer Hebrides. 

On it was inscribed “Pilgrim Cormac”, and, below, were the words; “He went beyond what was deemed possible.”

The cardinal wrote that he had mentioned this to “ripples of amusement” at his installation as archbishop. 

“As I reminded them, before my appointment the bookmakers had me listed as a 25-to-1 outsider,” he said.

Another ‘outsider’ the cardinal knows “quite well” is Pope Francis, who surprised the world when he unexpectedly emerged from the conclave in 2013 as Pontiff.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is reported to have been runner-up in the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI, had been overlooked by many Vatican watchers for the papacy in 2013 on account of his age.

However, as Cardinal Murphy O’Connor pointed out, the “bravery” of Pope Benedict in resigning made age irrelevant. 

Younger man

Admitting the cardinals gathered in Rome ahead of the conclave which would eventually elect Bergoglio had initially a younger man in mind, the former Archbishop of Westminster said they soon realised age “didn’t matter”.

“If we have the right man with the right qualities he can always resign if his health gets bad. It gave the cardinals greater freedom,” he told The Irish Catholic.

Bergoglio himself was no stranger to Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, who was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001 on the same day as the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and sat beside him at a number of subsequent meetings in Rome.

Since becoming Pontiff, Francis, according to the cardinal has been a “breath of fresh air” for the Church.

Cardinal Murphy O’Connor is also clearly impressed with the Pope’s drive for decentralisation and the development of a more collegial Church.

“The Second Vatican Council indicated in different ways that the Church should be more collegial, in other words the Pope working with the bishops, that the Synod of Bishops should have more effect and that there should also be greater subsidiarity, which means more should be left to the local Church,” Cardinal Murphy O’Connor said.

“I think over the years since the council there has been a gradual development of that but I think Pope Francis has brought it to a greater level and I think that’s good,” he added.

Noting that the Pope’s particular style is one of “simplicity”, Cardinal Murphy O’Connor warned against being fooled by the Pontiff whom he insists is “very intelligent”.

Offering some insight into Pope Francis’ style, the cardinal suggested that a key trait of Pope Francis is that he “takes people where they are”. 

“He may be talking to a Muslim, a non-believer or a Catholic, it doesn’t matter. He takes you where you are and brings you on a step,” he said, adding that the Pope “is able to do that very personally”. 

“He gives himself an opportunity to do that and I think that’s very important for the Church.”

It’s this that the cardinal believes has “endeared” the Pope to “so many people outside the Catholic Church too”.

“I think they like his style of mercy. He pushes the mercy button very strongly.

“In today’s world, people look for meaning and hope in their lives and for us the meaning of life is to be accepted by God, to be loved by God and to be forgiven by God and I think Pope Francis exhibits that in a very profound way,” he said, adding that his “difficult” experience as a Jesuit Provincial during a “turbulent time” in the history of Argentina has made for a “unique experience” before coming to the papacy.

The cardinal pointed to the Pontiff’s key programmatic document, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

“When you get Catholics who are alive with the spirit of the Gospel then things happen. He brings that,” the cardinal said of Pope Francis, adding that he also cares about the “welfare of the world” pointing to his recent encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise be to You).

Cardinal Murphy O’Connor himself is now six years retired and living near a church in Chiswick on the outskirts of London where he regularly celebrates Mass. “I rather enjoy being a curate again,” the cardinal quipped.

He looks back on his time as a pastor both with pride and some regrets.

Among the highlights for the cardinal was being present at a conclave, recalling the “big privilege of marching into the Sistine Chapel and looking around at the other cardinals knowing one of us is going to come out in a different coloured cassock”. “That was a highlight,” he said.

Searching deeper, however, the cardinal admitted one of the things he regretted most about his time as the leader of the Church in England and Wales was “not being braver and being more outspoken… on things in the moral sphere”. 

And so, the cardinal has penned his memoirs, An English Spring, with some highlights and regrets in mind. 

One of the things the cardinal acknowledges early on in the book was the “great blessing of being brought up in a secure and loving family”.

It is no surprise then that the cardinal maintains Christmas as “a joy”.

“Christmas is a lovely occasion especially for families,” he said, adding that it is also an opportunity for people, who don’t regularly attend Mass to “put God into their lives”.

Cardinal Murphy O’Connor looks forward in particular each year to spending time around the festive period with his late brother Jim’s large family. 

Jim, who died in 2014, was a celebrated Irish rugby player. Rugby, however, wasn’t going to be a talking point of this particular interview. At the time of writing both England (the cardinal’s team) and Ireland (this reporter’s team) had dramatically crashed out of the Rugby World Cup.

“We won’t talk about rugby, it’s too sad a story,” the cardinal said with a sigh. 

So, instead, we turn to the future.

“I’m 83. I live each day as it comes,” the cardinal said. 

Last August Elysha Brennan, the Meath Rose, became the first winner of the Rose of Tralee in seven years to come from an Irish centre. Her “incredible journey” began three years ago when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, at the age of 19 and underwent intensive chemotherapy treatment. She decided to write a ‘bucket list’ of goals to achieve and her aunt Ciara persuaded her to enter the Rose of Tralee.

Elysha’s ambition was to become the Meath Rose and reach the international final in Tralee. She says she never thought about winning, despite being the strongest favourite with the bookies. However, now in remission from cancer, she has learned the hard way that life is “fleeting and unpredictable”, so she has embraced the title of Rose and Tralee, and all its responsibilities and opportunities, with a great passion and enthusiasm.

Speaking as she prepared to travel to Tralee’s twin town in Germany to officially open the Christmas market along with the German Rose, Elysha says her time so far as Rose of Tralee has been “a whirlwind of travelling”.

“I have been to parts of Ireland I thought I would never get to go to and also other parts of the world. I’m heading to Germany in two days and I am just back from India. There have just been so many incredible events and lots of amazing people. Also lots of TV things and radio interviews, which are really exciting, so it is like a full time job and I am busy 5-6 days a week.”

Medical student

The 22-year-old from Bettystown was due to enter her third year as a medical student in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin this year, but has deferred her studies for a year to concrete on her role as Rose. “At the time it was a really difficult decision to make, but in hindsight it was kind of a given because there is no way I could have done the two.” 

She says being the Rose of Tralee “is such a once-in-a-lifetime thing” and her college was “really supportive” of her decision. “They said we will facilitate you in whatever way we can to help. They were really encouraging and they were so excited about it as well. It will be interesting when I go back next year. Hopefully I will remember one or two things! That will be challenging, but I’m not thinking that far ahead,” she says.

While she is still very early on in her studies, she has a keen interest in working with children and says her heart is telling her to go into paediatrics. It was this interest in the welfare of children that led her to recently travel to India to visit the Hope Foundation, a children’s charity founded by Corkwoman Maureen Forrest.

“What they do is educate and care for street and slum children in Kolkata,” Elysha explains. “They have nine homes over there where they house abandoned children and care for them. It is a full time live-in facility. There is also a huge emphasis on education so they have Hope Schools. They believe every child is entitled to an education as a fundamental right. It is incredible to see these children flourish and they are so grateful and happy to be going to school. 

“They also have a fully functional Hope Hospital which takes in people who can’t afford health care. I got to meet lots of incredible children there and it is all coming from fundraising,” she says.

“I am so passionate about it because I have seen first-hand where the money goes. Something that was so poignant for me when I was over there, was that I thought what would be the fate of these children and what kind of life would they be living if the Hope Foundation hadn’t stepped in and essentially saved them.” (www.hopefoundation.ie)

Elysha has a strong sense of the importance of helping others who are less fortunate, especially after her own brush with serious ill health. 

A few months before the Rose of Tralee final, she went on a parish pilgrimage to Lourdes as a volunteer assisting sick pilgrims and she plans to go back next April with the Irish Pilgrimage Trust to assist special needs children. 

“I wanted to give something back and to give thanks,” she says. “Lourdes was a very special place for me and a very personal one. It was about being one-to-one and helping people. That is where my faith and passion lies.”

While she would class herself as more spiritual than religious, Elysha says she believes in God, she prays and she has “a great faith”. “I think it is something that is really personal and unique to everyone.”

Christmas is a very important family time for Elysha and after another trip to the Middle East in mid-December she made sure to have a few days off in her schedule for Christmas and New Year.

“I have really prioritised taking Christmas off. It is a really important time in our family and I don’t believe anyone should be working over Christmas if they can at all possibly take it off,” she says, looking forward to a traditional family holiday.

“I’m 22 and my brother and sister Sean and Kate are 19, but we still do Santa. Santa even comes to the dog. It is a very traditional morning. We have a big breakfast and we go to Mass. Then we come home and chill out and go to my aunt Ciara’s. There are about 20 of us for dinner in her house. It really is my favourite day of the year. She is an incredible cook and she has a menu printed out and everything. That dinner goes on for hours and hours,” she says. 

“Then in the evening time we travel to my other cousins on the other side of the family and we have a bit of a sing song and a party there. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t do this, so I always associate Christmas with this routine. 

“Then on St Stephen’s Day we go to my other auntie and have a second Christmas dinner and open more presents. Spending time with family is a huge priority for Christmas. It is nothing really fancy, it is just fundamentally about being with your family.”

Elysha is still “chipping away” at her bucket list, but she says her whole experience of the Rose of Tralee competition, from becoming Meath Rose in April to receiving the crown in August, has been a huge highlight and an “incredible journey”.

While Elysha still gets tired sometimes and needs to make sure she doesn’t overdo things in her new hectic lifestyle, she says she is in “great health” and wants to “seize every opportunity”. “If I am feeling good then why not go for things. I suppose I realised that life is very short and fleeting and unpredictable, and I try to go for everything that I can,” she says.

One can’t but wonder how Pope Francis isn’t tempted to take a holiday after a visit to the stunning summer residence available to him in Castel Gandolfo.

The famed Apostolic Palace there has served for centuries as a vacation retreat for many of his predecessors. Not in the habit of holidays, however, Pope Francis prefers to remain at the Vatican despite the summer heat.

While many have heralded the workaholic Pontiff’s inclination to shun such luxuries as an act of solidarity with the poor, residents of Castel Gandolfo feared this particular decision would lead to a loss of revenue for the many shops and restaurants that relied on tourists visiting the town during the summer in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Pope.

It was surely with this in mind that Pope Francis last year decided to open up the spectacular papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo to visitors. And this reporter took full advantage.

Lake Albano

The picturesque town perched on Alban Hills overlooking the volcanic Lake Albano provided the perfect get away from the hustle and bustle of the busy Roman streets during a break from covering the Synod of Bishops in October.

Beginning the day with a two hour tour of the magnificent Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel provided the perfect place to set the scene. It is after all where the cardinals cast their votes for the new Pope in the shadow of Michelangelo’s daunting depiction of The Last Judgement. 

The museums display works from the immense collection built up by the Popes throughout the centuries including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world.

The most impressive artwork in this reporter’s humble opinion is to be found in the four Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello), the Stanza della Segnatura in particular. 

There Raphael’s frescoes depict the three greatest categories of the human spirit: Truth, Good and Beauty. Supernatural Truth is illustrated in the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (theology), while rational Truth is illustrated in the School of Athens (philosophy). Good is expressed in the Cardinal Virtues, while beauty is represented in The Parnassus with Apollo and the Muses. 

This room, in fact, provides the perfect prelude to the crescendo that is the Sistine Chapel.

Next up on the agenda was a walking tour of the Vatican Gardens, which were established during the Renaissance and Baroque era and are decorated with an array of fountains and sculptures. The winding path of the well-groomed gardens leads visitors past Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s new home at the Monastero Mater Ecclesiae en route to Vatican Railway, where a train is waiting to transport visitors to Albano Laziale station, just outside Castel Gandolfo.

The train goes a few hundred feet before it passes the bricked Vatican City walls and enters Italian territory. It heads southeast going through Rome’s apartment-block neighbourhoods and graffiti-strewn buildings. Soon it meanders across grassy fields, following an ancient Roman aqueduct along the Appian Way, until it cuts through dark tunnels and opens out onto the hills of the Castelli Romani regional park.

At the final destination, shuttle buses await tourists upon arrival to take them on the short drive to the day’s main event – the Gardens of the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo.

Castel Gandolfo became a papal summer residence in 1626 when Pope Urban VIII spent his vacation there, as he had done as a cardinal. Many Popes never visited or could not – particularly in the years after the fall of the Papal States and before a treaty was signed with Italy. When the Lateran Pacts were signed in 1929, the Vatican’s ownership was recognised and work began on making the formal gardens as they exist today. 

Simply stunning, the pruned-to-perfection gardens are admired from the comfort of a Pullman, fashioned to resemble an old steam train, which departs from the helipad where previous Popes have in the past been seen landing in a ‘chopper’. 

The papal property at Castel Gandolfo extends over 135 acres – compared to the 108.7 acres of Vatican City – and includes 17 acres of formal gardens, three residences and a working farm. 

The gardens, planted in the 1930s, are a meticulously maintained historic, artistic and botanical treasure. The emphasis on symmetry and geometric topiary – the hedges are trimmed flat or carefully rounded – is meant to reflect and extend the architecture of the main buildings to the outdoors. 

The other treasure on the property is the 1st-Century ruins of the summer villa of Roman Emperor Domitian, who reigned in 81-96. 

The farm is the real deal too, producing 185 gallons of milk a day, 50,000 eggs a year, honey, olive oil and vegetables. Aside from the cow, hens, rabbits, ducks, the farm is also home to two donkeys that had been gifted to Pope Saint John Paul II, which visitors on this tour got a real kick out of spotting.

Following the hour-long relaxing tour of the gardens, visitors are left to their own devices for lunch. With plenty of classic Italian restaurants to choose from, tourists will be spoilt for choice. 

Even after lunch, there still remains time to explore the town albeit unguided. The Apostolic Palace itself is the obvious choice.

It was there that Pope Saint John Paul II controversially had a swimming pool built for him to swim in during the summer months. To those who criticised the pool’s construction, he countered that exercise was important for his health and that electing a new Pope would be even more expensive!

More recently, television stations across the globe showed the villas when Pope Benedict XVI decided to spend the last hours of his papacy in Castel Gandolfo, flying there by helicopter from the Vatican after announcing his shock retirement in February, 2013. 

The town of nearly 9,000 residents had been used to hosting Popes since the 17th Century and the last year a Pontiff did not spend at least one summer month in the town was during World War II. In fact, it was during the war that Pope Pius XII first threw open the doors to let in what had been a record number of guests.

Hundreds of people sought shelter within the villa’s walls for a few days in 1943 during a heavy Allied bombing campaign. And when the area became an active war zone in January 1944, the Pope hosted an estimated 12,000 people in the neutral territory of the papal villas. 

With so much papal history attached to this tiny town, the disappointment among residents that Pope Francis isn’t keen on a stay is clearly understandable. 

However, locals will undoubtedly be kept busy by the recent influx of tourists eager to pay a visit with demand for tours showing no signs of dwindling. 

Book early to avoid disappointment!

mv.vatican.va

Country superstar Nathan Carter is riding a rising tide of success with the revival of the popularity of country music in Ireland. However, this comes after nearly 10 years of hard work gigging in pubs around Ireland and England as a teenager, when his peers considered country music uncool, and he says he feels “blessed” to now be able to make a living out of something that he truly loves.

Nathan spent his childhood years in Liverpool and grew up in a family with strong Irish roots, his parents originating from Newry in Co. Down, and he says “music and dancing came naturally to my family”. 

Nathan is the eldest child of three and the first grandchild on his mother’s side and he says he was “very much spoiled”. He continues to have a very close relationship with his nan, who was “the one who really pushed me to get into music”.

Accordion

“I used to be taken to watch all the Irish bands play from the age of four. I started to learn the accordion and competed in Fleadh Ceoils for many years.” 

When he started secondary school at St Francis Xavier’s College, a Catholic boys’ school, he joined the local choir and soon became head chorister of the Liverpool Boys’ Choir. This brought the opportunity to travel the world performing and Nathan says the experience he most “treasures” is singing for Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

“I was only 11 and what an experience! I have never been back to Rome since but I would love to get back some day. It was something I will treasure for rest of my life. I got to see a lot of the world with the choir. We went to America and different places in Europe and sang in a lot of lovely cathedrals – I think we sang in 50 cathedrals,” he says.

Nathan was also an altar boy for five years and sang and played the accordion at Mass every Sunday. These days he says “unfortunately I don’t get to Mass that much now because I’m generally getting in at 5am on a Sunday morning from a gig, but faith has always been a big part of the family way of life”.

Trips to Ireland to compete in Fleadh Ceoil’s became a regular feature of the young Nathan’s life during his early teens, resulting in All Ireland medals for solo singing and in accordion, all at just 12 years of age.

Nathan became a member of the Liverpool Ceili band, playing accordion and piano, and he soon began playing solo gigs around Liverpool and London and playing occasional shows in Ireland. 

“I left school at 16 and started playing in pubs and clubs by myself, just me and a guitar. I got a lot of experience musically and I found out the hard way what gigging was like,” he says. “Sometimes there were only 4-5 people there to play to, but it was all a good learning curve I suppose. I moved to Ireland when I was 17 and started the band and I have been gigging with the band in Ireland ever since.”

The 25-year-old has recorded five albums and two DVDs, and with his album Where I Wanna Be in 2013 he became the first country act to have reached number one in the album charts in Ireland since Garth Brooks over six years before. This was followed by two more number one albums with the Wagon Wheel Live Show in 2014 and Beautiful Life in 2015.

But it is the blockbuster song Wagon Wheel, taken from his album of the same name in 2012, which has been his biggest hit so far and the catalyst of his meteoric rise in fame, with over a million hits on Youtube alone.

However, Nathan’s first ever gig was in a home for elderly people when he was just 12 and it was organised by his nan. “She also got me my first gig in a pub in Liverpool called the Liffey Bar and she would drive me around to gigs because I was only 16 and couldn’t drive. Still to this day she comes to sell the merchandise when we are on tour,” he says.

Nathan describes his grandmother as the typical Irish nan, “forever telling me I need to eat more and trying to feed me”. “She is 75 but she thinks she is 22. She is very good fun to be around. She is one of those people who is the life and soul of the party,” he says. 

In his busiest year ever Nathan has been touring Ireland for the last few months, performing a number of sold out shows and releasing a new DVD and CD of a live gig recorded in the Marque in Cork during the summer in front of around 5,000 people. He will be continuing his tour in the New Year, but he is enjoying a well-earned break this week to spend Christmas with his family.

Christmas

“At Christmas I always head back to my mum and dad’s house in Liverpool,” he says. “This year I am lucky to have a week off after a mad busy schedule right through to December 20.” Nathan will share a full house with 16 family members on Christmas Day, between grandparents, parents, siblings and cousins. “We go to midnight Mass and we get up early on Christmas morning to see my cousins opening the presents. We normally leave my mum and sister to it because I am useless at cooking. I usually take granddad and my dad to the pub. Then we have turkey and all the trimmings.” 

Nathan says while he does not go as far as wearing a Christmas jumper he does get into the fun of side of Christmas with the food, games and presents, but it is also a very meaningful family time for him. 

“It means a lot more to me now because I don’t get to see my family that much during the year, because they live in Liverpool. I’d say I see them once every two months for a weekend or something. When I am touring England I would stay with my mum and dad every now and again, but Christmas is extra special and I try to make the most of Christmas,” he says. 

Break

Nathan will follow his Christmas break with a two-week holiday in January in the US, prior to an exhausting spring schedule of tour dates in Scotland, England, France and Germany.

His life on the road travelling from town to town sounds challenging, but Nathan says he was “built to do it”. “I wake up every day and think about gigs and music. There is nothing else I would think about. It occupies so much of what I do. It is part of life,” he says. “The travelling is the hardest bit, but it is all part and parcel of the life of a musician on the road.” 

Nathan did try other jobs when he was younger and not earning enough from his music, including working on a building site, but all he could think about “was the next gig”. “I am very fortunate that I am blessed to be able to do this career and can make a living from it. It is something I love doing,” he says.

Nathan has seen the country music scene change and expand in the last three years in Ireland. He himself has played a big role in the growth of its popularity, by attracting a whole new generation of fans with his energetic passion to perform his beloved country classics and creating an extremely loyal fan base of all ages.

Nathan was one of the guests on The Late Late Show’s recent country music special, along with Daniel O’Donnell, Big Tom and Philomena Begley – one of Nathan’s mentors when he first started performing in Ireland. It brought in the highest viewing figures of the year. The total audience reached over the course of the show peaked at a record-breaking 1.3 million, with over a half of all Irish viewers watching television at that time choosing to tune in.

RTÉ then capitalised on the popularity of country music with a series called Stetsons and Stilettos which followed Nathan on the road and explored the world of Irish country and its fans. Following on from this Nathan has been given his own television show on St Stephen’s night on RTÉ One. 

“It is going to be my first ever TV show and I am delighted. I can’t wait and I will have a few special guests for the night. It is very exciting and hopefully the people will like it,” he says.

Nathan can’t quite pinpoint what was the source of the revival in the popularity of country music, but he thinks it speaks to the Irish on some level.

“I think Irish people definitely love country,” Nathan says. “When I kicked off my career country music was very uncool and no young ones would come and listen to it.

“I have seen it totally revive and at most of our gigs now most of the crowd would be under the age of 30 anyway. I think people in Ireland have a love for country music, even with the Garth Brooks thing last year it is amazing to think that Gareth Brooks can sell more tickets than One Direction, one of the biggest groups in the world.”

This seems a long way from when a teenage Nathan Carter was performing in front of four people in a pub in Liverpool, and no one needs to remind him of how lucky he has been to see his career develop in such leaps and bounds to make his shows the hottest tickets in town.

Pure country

“At the start anyone my age would have laughed at me singing country,” he says. “They would have been like, Johnny Cash, what’s that about, you know? I suppose the stuff I do is not necessarily pure country either, there is a mix of trad music because I am playing the accordion as well. 

“I try and put on the most energetic show I can and I think that appeals to a lot of different ages. If you are putting on a show that is exciting and people want to come and see it, it all helps.”

Every January government files newly transferred from various departments of state to the National Archives are opened for the use of the public on the first working day of the year. 

This has become, for the national press, something of an annual event of some importance. Today’s newspapers will be filled largely with political stories, but The Irish Catholic goes a little further and looks into corners of interest neglected by the other media. 

The release of the files is seen as a move towards a more open and transparent style of government. But there has never been a government of any kind (the Vatican City included) who have not preferred to keep their secrets as long as possible, if not for ever. 

This year files from some eight departments are released: Department of the Taoiseach (including the Northern Ireland division), Finance, Foreign Affairs (including missions abroad), Justice and Law Reform, Social Protection, Office of the Attorney General, Office of the Chief State Solicitor and the Office of the Secretary to the President. 

The State Directory, however, lists some 16 government departments, and some 39 state offices. From this it will be clear at once that the annual release, though widely and rightly reported, is only the tip of the very large and hidden iceberg that is the apparatus of the State. 

Several important departments rarely produce files: Agriculture, Defence, Health, Transport and Education. All these impinge directly on our lives, our homes and our safety. But we learn little about them.

Once state records were more limited. The National Archives, established in 1988, combines the old State Paper Office, which had been in Dublin Castle, with the Public Record Office (PRO), once housed in a building behind the Four Courts.

Our earliest public records, preserved in the PRO, were destroyed in 1922 by a bomb exploded by Peadar O’Donnell and other Republicans occupying the Four Courts: fragments of medieval documents floated away on the wind along the Liffey. 

Other records had been destroyed in 1920 when the IRA burned the Customs House in an attempt to paralyse local government in Ireland. Others were destroyed by the British before Dublin Castle was handed over to the Free State.

Dangers

Nowadays other dangers beset the records. Some are judged of little value, or are merely administrative, and these are destroyed under Section 7 of the National Archives Act 1986. Others are held back, either for reasons of security, sensitivity, or because they are ongoing. Files are only transferred when they are closed.

So what is presented as an exercise in open government is a very limited one. 

But as the National Archives are underfunded, under resourced, and understaffed, those directing it are glad that mass transfers do not put too much pressure on the whole system. 

With the return of prosperity perhaps now the Government can provide the increased funds for the National Archives, along the lines of similar institutions in the US, France, Britain and elsewhere. 

The National Archives is located in Bishop Street, Dublin D08 DF85, beside the Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier Street. The opening hours are 9.15-17.00 Monday to Friday. The records from 1985 will be available to the public from 9.15am on Monday, January 4, 2016. For further information telephone: + 353 (0)1 407 2300; or email: mail@nationalarchives.ie

The Vatican: Ireland’s diplomatic listening post

In recent years the justification of Ireland maintaining an embassy in both the Vatican and Italy has been the subject of much controversy, with the Vatican legation being abolished and then re-established. 

The Government seems to have taken little cognisance of the fact that the Italian State does not care to have any ambassador accredited to Rome to also be accredited to the Vatican, though this was well known to the diplomats in Iveagh House. 

The vital importance of our embassy in the Vatican over past decades as a source of important information is revealed in several files newly released. Much of this confidential information relates to places which are of vital importance internationally, and for Ireland’s interests too.

Ireland and Cuba at the Vatican 

It was at the Vatican at the end of November 1983 that the Cuban Ambassador to the Holy See came to visit by appointment the Irish Ambassador. 

He explained that he had been instructed by his Foreign Ministry to informally approach Ambassador Cooney about the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Cuba was then a bête noir of the USA, but that did not enter into this encounter. 

The ambassador had to explain that though the Government during the 1970s had extended its diplomatic contacts, Ireland still had fewer than 30 embassies. There was only one embassy in Latin America, in Buenos Aires - but then Ireland had long standing connections with Argentina, where there was a significant section of the population were of Irish origin - and still spoke with Irish accents after three generations, according to another source.  

Connection

The Cuban ambassador appreciated that, but thought the connection could be non-residential initially. Ambassador Cooney passed all this back to Iveagh House. 

But the Government decided the financial burden would be too great even to establish relations on a non-residential basis. This was presented to the Cuban Ambassador to the Holy See at his residence on April 26, 1983 as an Aide Memoir, which was less formal than a Third Party Note. 

These niceties aside, the Cubans were, it seems, very disappointed. It would have led to an improvement in trade, and they hoped the Irish Government would reconsider it in a few years. Ireland, after all, was now the only European country with which Cuba did not have diplomatic relations. They had relations with Iceland, Malta and even tiny San Marino.

Eventually Ireland did establish relations with Cuba through the Irish embassy in Mexico City in 1999. Though there is still no Irish legation resident in Cuba, these days the Cuban flag flies over an embassy building in Pearse Square.

This is a nice example of what Ireland gains by having diplomatic relations with the Vatican however. 

Garrett FitzGerald meets the Pope 

On March 28/29, 1977 Dr Garret FitzGerald, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, in Italy for an EEC Summit, paid a visit to the Vatican, during which he had the opportunity of an audience with Pope Paul VI.

So much at least was known to the press, who seem to have been more concerned with Dr FitzGerald’s next stop in Spain. But confidential reports of the meeting, now released, reveal a different story. 

About 10.45am the minister, who was accompanied to the Vatican by Ambassador Woods and others, was received alone in a private audience by the Pope. Confidential notes record: 

“What had originally been envisaged as a standard courtesy call developed in a rather unexpected way and a quarter of an hour was devoted to a more substantial discussion devoted to the situation in Northern Ireland.

“This took FitzGerald by surprise who in the time left to him attempted to make some general points about Northern Ireland.”

Statement

He was astonished to find the Pope had a prepared brief, in the form of a statement, which he read and which constituted a confrontation with the minister that Catholic Ireland must remain secure, according to two reports of the meeting. 

“The Minister interpreted this to mean that we must not in our policies in regard to Northern Ireland, neglect the preservation of the essential Catholic nature of Ireland.” What had been intended to be a polite formal meeting had been politicised.

Later FitzGerald told the embassy staff that while he was in the ante-room waiting to be ushered in he heard someone reading over the statement to the Pope.

The ambassador suspected that the brief had been written by Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, the acting Secretary of State, and it was he who was present before the audience. Benelli had been secretary at the papal nunciature  in Ireland from 1950-1953.

At a later meeting FitzGerald had with Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, in effect the Foreign Minister of the Vatican; he gave a very able and comprehensive review of the situation in Northern Ireland.

In the minds of the diplomats, behind the Pope’s statement was the information that was being feed to Benelli by the then papal nuncio in Dublin, Gaetano Alibrandi (1969 - 1989), who the Government in Dublin felt was far too sympathetic to the republicans in the North already. The Vatican talked of the need to withdraw the British army, which the Government in Dublin saw would be the signal for pogrom of the Catholic in Belfast, and elsewhere.

“I advised the minister,” the ambassador wrote, “to make no statement to Benelli about the Irish Government’s view of the nuncio but to concentrate on the fact that we knew from first hand sources that the nuncio was expounding this policy to foreign ambassadors in Dublin.” 

This view of the North was found in Ireland as well. On November 15, 1984 Archbishop Kevin MacNamara followed Dermot Ryan as Primate of Ireland, when Ryan was appointed to the curia. The Government, attempting to reflect the widest views in Ireland, found Archbishop MacNamara, along with Jeremiah Newman, Dermot Ryan and Ó Fiaich in Armagh “unhelpful”.

Documents of this time from the Vatican embassy give interesting side lights on the characters of these prelates, which future historians will value. However a senior official in the Vatican told the Irish ambassador that they had concerns about Archbishop MacNamara. They hoped “he would grow into the job”. He died three years later.

When it was pointed out that he had been appointed to the post by the Vatican, the official remarked that just because one appointed  a person to a position it does not mean one always agrees with him.

In time of change and worse, coming times of scandal, the role of these higher clergy and the even the Vatican would often come to be questioned. 

The changing style at the Áras 

Though they seem to be little regarded by the media, reflecting a long established attitude, left over the era of Seán T. O’Kelly and Éamon de Valera, that the presidency was of little account, the files released over the years by the Office of the Secretary to the President reveal evidence of a changing style, moving from one which might have been thought over-Catholic to one which would be regarded as more inclusive. 

These changes began under Erskine Childers, long before the much vaunted periods in office of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. Many things were said and done, without the publicity of candles in windows and controversial speeches. 

Certainly newspapers which now often display disdain for Church affairs were the quite happy the to give large space to photographs of de Valera with Archbishop McQuaid as an event such as a High Mass celebrating the golden anniversary of Ireland’s oldest Irish speaking sodality, Cuallacht Mhuire gan Smál in 1966, or at Clongowes Wood College for the 150th anniversary of its opening two years before.

For the period covered by the files in recent years Dr Hillery was in office. As far back as 1982 I can recall speaking casually to his aide de camp when the President was unveiling the bust of James Joyce in St Stephen’s Green to mark the centenary of the writer’s birth. He explained the President had some six engagements that day - yet only one of these was reported by the media. 

Remains true

This remains true today for the heavy duty diary of the President rarely gets attention, yet there are many organisations, parishes and institutions which are only too delighted to receive a presidential visit, which they rightly interpret as a symbol of the nation’s esteem for what they do or have done. 

All of this can be seen in the files just released. There are many engagements not just with Catholic events, such as the celebration of the Marist Brothers in Athlone in September 1984, but also with vents and ceremonies of many minority groups. One such, again in September 1984, was the opening of Ovoca Manor, a Christian adventure centre run by the Scripture Union of Ireland. 

The Rev. Kennth Todd, a Methodist minister from Ulster, later wrote to the President. “We are very grateful for your visit which added not only dignity to the occasion, but delight. Your speech made a great impression and people continue to comment on its sincerity and humour.” They were more than pleased with the coverage in the newspaper and on television.

What had Dr Hillery said? He had opened in Irish, as seems is always to be done, but went on to praise the scheme.

“In a corner of the Earth where peace and tranquillity embrace protectively all who come here, it has set the centre of challenge to the irrepressible energy and enthusiasm and sense of wonder of youth.”

He added: “I have heard much warm praise of the Scripture Union’s work for youth in the great outdoors. What I have heard has filled me with the warmest admiration of its great work I welcome, therefore, this opportunity, therefore, to pay tribute to that work and to wish it ever greater success for the future.”

He concluded: “This is a warm-hearted welcoming centre, a happy home from home with its doors open to all youth.”

Resettling refugees not a new issue

Currently the whole of Europe is greatly concerned about migrants arriving from the Middle East and from Africa. But this is not for Ireland a new problem. In between the wars and just after, small numbers of individual refugees from Germany, and later from Brittany, some with dubious political backgrounds, came to Ireland. But they seem not to have been seen as a problem, though at no time does the Government seem to have wanted large numbers.

This began to change. Ireland accepted groups of refugees for resettlement on later occasions from Hungry in 1956, from Chile in 1974, and from Vietnam in 1979-1981. 

The Hungarian refugees, fleeing the consequences of the October uprising which was brutally suppressed by the Soviets, like so many of the Jews who had come to Ireland in the decades around 1900, were really in transit to the US. (But while they were encamped by the State at Shannon, they comforted themselves by distilling their traditional spirits, which led to a police raid and expressions of sympathy from a nation of poteen drinkers.)  

Following the fall of President Allende and the seizure of power by the right-wing military under General Pinochet many Chileans fled abroad. Some 7,000 fled to Canada alone. Those who came to Ireland were quickly absorbed.

With fall of the Shah in 1979 and the installation of a revolutionary religious rule in Iran another problem appeared with the persecution of the Baha’i religion. The adherents of Baha’i were not Muslims, but held a broader, more humanist philosophy, but it was one abhorred by the regime in Iran, and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Needs

There were by nearly 1,500 refugees in Pakistan. However, those coming to Ireland were offered full support by the established Irish Baha’i Community, many of whom were Irish nationals, who undertook to meet all their immediate needs. Ireland had taken a strong view on religious persecution around the world, a stand that continues to this day.

In July 1985, in the period governed by the new files, the Government decided to admit 25 Iranian Baha’i refugees (then in camps in Pakistan) for resettlement.

That year some 212 Vietnamese refugees were also admitted. The passage of many of these was paid by the Government. By 1985 there were 315 Vietnamese in the country.

Most of the Vietnamese refugees (then called “the boat people” - an echo of what is now happening) went to Australia, the USA and France. Those who came to Ireland, among whom were many children, were again settled quickly. 

This resettlement system was organised by the Dept. of Defence (who had been involved in camps for families in Northern Ireland earlier). However, by September 1983 the Minister of Defence said he wished to close down the operation. This caused much concern to various charities and NGOs.

By May 1985 the Government was anxious about the establishment of permanent rather than reactive structures to deal with what was becoming an ongoing problem. Aside from government departments and agencies, Church related bodies were also involved, such as the Episcopal Commission for Emigrants.

Clearly there were problems in resettling people whose first language was not English, or even their second language (many of the Vietnamese would have spoken French). 

Many NGOs, having protested about the closing down of the early programme, seem to have still seen the Department of Defence as having the right skills, the resources and goodwill to co-ordinate the tasks. 1985 ended with the future organisation still to be organised. 

In trying to aid refugees by resettling them in Ireland the Government was recognising its obligations internationally. There was on all sides, a fund of goodwill to see that problems were resolved.

In the 30 years since then more and more non-nationals have settled in Ireland either as European emigrants or as refugees of one kind or another. 

This has seen the emergence of significant Middle Eastern, Somali and Ethiopian communities, and also Muslims and Buddhists from Burma.

On the whole, however, despite the problems, Ireland’s record can be seen as a good one in this very difficult area, which is now proving both socially and politically divisive in Western Europe. It is a problem which will present Ireland with many difficulties soon, difficulties which the experiences of the past may help to solve. 

Murder and society

Crime does not always loom large in the annual release of files, for various reasons to do with security and sensitivity. 

Two files this year are relevant to the matter of rural murder. The earliest file released this year is one relating to the murder at Marlhill in Tipperary in 1940, for which a local farmer, Harry Gleeson, was later hanged.

The file contained only incidental papers and plans, in addition to files already in the archives which were used by those who obtained a posthumous pardon for Harry Gleeson, earlier this year, the first in the nation’s history. This case raised very serious issues about the conduct of the investigation, the behaviour of the police to witnesses, and a great deal of technical incompetence.

The other matter was a file relating to the now notorious “Kerry Babies” affair, in April 1984, or rather to the setting up of the official inquiry. The files on the inquiry will be released, hopefully, next year. What was discovered by the press and by that inquiry was very disturbing.

Personal conduct

The common factor in these two cases was the behaviour of the Gardaí, especially when it involved sexual matters and personal conduct disapproved by the community (though not illegal). 

In the Marlhill murder trial the role of the IRA and the seeming reluctance of Seán MacBride, the junior barrister for the defence, though convinced of his client’s innocence, to probe the role of his erstwhile comrades in the IRA, in which he had been a leading figure, raises concern as well.

The country owes a great deal to the Garda Síochána since the foundation of the State, so it is all the more important that errant behaviours should be fully investigated, however embarrassing it may prove to the community. This is not a lesson from history. It is a fact of life.

Most people think they are aware of the size of Ireland and its boundaries. But a series of files now released, dealing with different aspects of policy, suggest we may all be unaware of just how large the national territory actually is.

One file, for instance, deals with the boundaries of Dublin. A special order had to be made by the Government to deal with this. One problem dealt with the land reclaimed from the sea, which had to be formally added to the city. Other parcels of land were transferred to other counties. This may seem to be dealing with very small issues, and yet major problems of land holding, property rights, and civil duties might well be affected by not having correct delimitations of the areas involved.

Far more contentious, however, were issues arising in the Northern troubles with the British authorities over what went on in Carlingford Lough, Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly. Both the Foyle and Lough Swilly had in former times been important anchorages for the British navy. Around 1985 the British navy was still active in these waters, but with a different security purpose.

The areas under the control of Ireland and of Northern Ireland are clearly mapped and known. Yet this did not prevent there being many clashes when the British security forces were trying to prevent smuggling of arms and personnel into the North.

Yachts would be boarded from time to time, in what the navigator claimed were Irish waters; but this did not take them far with the British military.

On one occasion a ferry boat, in regular service, carrying a party of school children back from an overseas visit was stopped and searched. The children refused to be suppressed and made abusive remarks and hand signs to the party searching the boat. Such clashes have ended with the Peace Settlement.

But in Lough Foyle, sandwiched as it is between Co. Derry and Inishowen, was also a troublesome spot. One interesting historical point of law emerges from the files.

Since 1922 the Irish Government took the view, that under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, the authorities in Northern Ireland only controlled the immediate shore of the maritime counties such as Derry, Antrim and Down. 

Beyond that the actual sea within the 12 miles maritime boundary was under the control of the Dublin authorities.

However, perhaps wisely, though they claimed this, they were careful not to plead in court or before an arbitrator, just in case the matter went against them before the judges. 

It seems this is still the situation, in the view of Dublin, on a de jure basis, rather than a de facto basis.

In the years before 1985 the real dispute was over Rockall, the stony outcrop in the wastes of the North Atlantic. In 1955 this had been formerly claimed by the United Kingdom, as the island lay in the range of the rocket test site in Scotland where they were developing ground to air missiles. British marines planted a flag on the island to confirm this.

Though the first and most important scientific mission to Rockall had been launched in 1896 by the Royal Irish Academy (as described in 1937 by Robert Lloyd Praeger in his classic book on Irish natural history The Way that I Went) the British saw the rock as part of Scotland - which may add a dimension of dispute in time to come when Scotland recovers its independence. And even then there will remain a claim not just by Ireland, but by Denmark, the sovereign authority of the largely self-governing Faroe Islands.

In geological terms, however Rockall, does not belong either to the continental shelf of Scotland, or of Ireland. It is part of Iceland. So it seems to be not so much an outpost of Europe, but an outpost of North America!

Recently on a visit to the Irish Geological Survey headquarters in Beggar’s Bush, Dublin in search of a special map of Connemara, I saw hanging up another map which showed in full colour Ireland’s “Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ) in the Atlantic. This was not for sale and no more copies were available. But it was fascinating.

It suggested that “the real Ireland” is in fact more extensive than people commonly appreciate.

They don’t think of what is under the ocean as real territory. But in these days of increasingly desperate searches for oil and natural gas resources wherever they can be found, whether by on-shore fracking or off-shore drilling, we will have to think of the EEZ area as part, and an increasingly important part, of the national territory of the real Ireland.

It brings to mind the old prophecy, attributed to St Patrick by a family’s great-grandmother, that before the end of the world Ireland would be largely under the sea. That is one prophecy, at least, which seems to have been fulfilled. Welcome to Doomsday?

In 1969, the poet Richard Murphy purchased High Island, now called Ardoileán, a small island rich with early Christian remains in the vicinity of Inishbofin off Galway, a place with which he had been associated since 1954.

“I got excited at the thought of buying this inaccessible holy island, restoring the beehive cells and oratory of its derelict hermitage and preserving the place from destruction either by tourists or by sheep,” relater recalled in his memoirs.

As a poet Richard Murphy was fully conscious from his own background of the mingled strands of Irish history, old Irish, planters, colonial service and rural life. He came of a Mayo Anglo-Irish family, but had spent his childhood in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and in the Bahamas, where his father was Governor-General.

One of his earliest works, The Battle of Aughrim (1968), is a long poem, a meditation on the conflicts and violence from which the modern nation emerged.

An artist of unsettled nature, now in his late eighties, he presently lives again in Sri Lanka. But he has gifted High Island to the nation, a gift made in return for all the advantages he gained as poet under the 1969 Finance Act, which abolished tax on artists’ earnings, and from his membership of Aosdána, which he received through the Arts Council.

Background

One of the released files deals with the background to the generous and appropriate act. This was done at the end of November 1985, and the island was vested (by government warrant) in the Commissioners of Public Works. One detects behind the austere formality of the papers the Government’s delight at such a gift.

The island consisted of some 33 hectares off the north-west coast of Galway. Richard Murphy had offered it to “the people of Ireland to be kept unpolluted and free from exploitation”. The island was already an area of scientific interest under the National Heritage Inventory because of its importance as place where wild birds bred, including the Peregrine Falcon. There are also Barnacle Geese and grey seals. 

However, the most interesting aspect of the island was the early Christian ruins. The hermitage, which survived on the south end of the island beside a small lake, had been founded by St Fechin, a saint associated with Galway who died in about 664.

Aside from the hermitage, there a number of penitential stations dotted round the island, two with decorated cross-slabs. It would be incorporated into the Connemara National Park. From the Office of Public Work’s (OPW) point of view it would be easy to care for as no permanent full time staff would be required.

The island’s importance had been recognised by archaeologists since the 19th Century.  It is now thought that it may well have been settled in late prehistoric times, about 300BC. Its importance to the poet himself was realised in his collection of poem High Island (1974): 

An older calm,

The kiss of rock and grass,

Pink thrift and white
sea-campion,

Flowers in the dead place.

...and another poet’s landscape  

The centenary of the birth of Patrick Pearse had been celebrated back in 1979, an anniversary which gave the Government an opportunity to emphasise the poet and the teacher that Pearse was, aspects often overlooked by admirers of his revolutionary creed.

Aside from the Connemara National Park, the Office of Public Works (OPW) also preserved Pearse’s Cottage, near Inbhear, near Rosmuc Village, Co. Galway. This stands on an unspoilt naturally beautiful spot overlooking the scenic Lough Aroolagh.

One of his pupils, who visited there, later recalled the days spent cycling through the region: “The Twelve Pins came in sight and Pearse waved his hand here and there over the land, naming lake, mountain and district away to the Joyce Country under its purple mist.”

One of the released files reveals that a local farmer had offered the State some 13 acres of land, lying along the lake, and according to a minute, “must be regarded as an important part of the monument’s environment and worthy of preservation”.

Acceptance would help to preserve the majestic view from the cottage over the landscape that the poet loved so much, the bare grey mountains and the brown-green of the heather land. 

The OPW thought that accepting the land at that time would enable them later to acquire even more, and so protect even more of what was a delicate environment. However, in the papers they advised the Government that it would be best to fence in the land at once. This would mean an immediate outlay of £5,000.

Generous gift

Experience had shown the OPW that when people realised that a stretch of local land anywhere belonged to the State - or in the view of some to “the people” - they would use it as a dump, steal the turf, or carry away the top soil. So the first thing to be done with this generous gift to the nation was to protect it from the nation.

This was a wise move. Richard Murphy’s island was largely inaccessible, being miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. But Pearse’s cottage is easily reached from Maam Cross, on the busy Galway to Clifden road, which carries so much tourist traffic. Though threatened by development, Pearse’s cottage still remains a place of haunted beauty, a place where for a time he could be truly happy.

In 1966, when the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, in which he had fought, was being marked, Joe McGrath, revolutionary, politician and founder of the Irish Sweep among many other businesses, died in his Co. Dublin home, Cabinteely House. 

His family did not want to live in the 18th Century mansion, swathed in Virginia creeper, but they offered it to the State with the surrounding land, on certain conditions. Thus opened a curious saga which is very revealing of attitudes to Irish heritage and resources.

But for a long time little was done. This came to a head in the summer of 1985 with a complaint from the local residents association, who wanted a museum of local history put in the house.

A civil servant in the Taoiseach’s department spoke to Tom Sheehan in the Dublin County Council. He reported to his superiors that “Mr Sheehan said that negotiations are taking place between the valuer of Dublin County Council and a valuer from the McGrath family with a view to the purchase of the fee simple [a form of freehold ownership] of the house, the furniture remaining in the house which was not sold at public auction and an additional six acres of land around (not part of the area already owned by the council).”

Poor condition

The McGrath family were looking for £100,000, and an additional £150,000 would be needed as the house was in poor condition and riddled with dry rot.

The house was take on by the State, and there began a competition to use it. The Dublin and Regional Tourism Organisation wanted to use it as their HQ, but they would first have to sell their current offices.

However, a scientist called Derek Felton had his eye on it as a possible home for the state geological collection, an idea supported by the director of the National Museum. They emphasised that this collection had never been properly housed or exhibited. But with the increasing importance of all things related to geology in Ireland with the rise of gas and oil exploration by land and sea, the public ought to be able to have access to a geology collection which illustrated this new Irish industry.

In 1981 Dublin Country Council approved the setting up of the museum. But a structural report showed that aside from repairs, if it was used for a museum of that kind the floor beams would have to be twined with steel joists to bear the weight. 

Finance considered the whole scheme too costly “in the economic circumstances prevailing” – a mantra now over-familiar in the 30 years since.

But the County Council now told the Government that Cabinteely House was no longer available, “as the McGrath family had made clear to the council that they wished the house contents to remain there for public enjoyment”. (The McGraths had, of course, already sold off the really valuable pieces. At the time they were one of the wealthiest families in Ireland)

According to the County Council website Cabinteely House, “while its refurbishment is ongoing, it is available for guided tours (by appointment) and corporate or community events. Within the courtyards the Council has refurbished a former grain store that is now used for the promotion and development of youth arts in the county.”

Also there is now an adventure playground and a coffee shop in the stables. But nothing long term has been decided about what will go into the house, or what it might be used for, aside for an occasional reception.

There is still no local museum, to the dismay of the residents. The geology collection still has no home worthy of its value to the nation, though some mineralogy specimens can be in the Natural History Museum, the Geology department in Trinity College, and the Geological Survey Offices in Beggars Bush (though only by appointment).

It seems that we have still not incorporated into our imagination the idea that our landscape and its geology is as much a part of our heritage as antiquities and poets’ cottages. Derek Felton’s dream remains to be fulfilled.

“A pagan people with Christian superstitions” – Wise words from Bishop Cahal Daly

Scattered among the state files are many items preserved for their importance and interest from other sources. This year one of these rare documents is a record of a 1981 lecture on the Irish situation made in Denmark to the Second European Ecumenical Encounter by Dr Cathal B. Daly, who had experience at first hand the horrors of the Northern troubles. A fierce critic of the IRA, he was later Primate of Ireland.

This “remarkably penetrating exposition” was copied in the Department of Foreign Affairs and sent to all Ireland’s diplomatic missions abroad.

He addressed himself specifically to the pain and scandal to European Christians that the troubles had the appearance of “a religious war”. 

“I said that Loyalist extremists and paramilitaries represent a secularisation of Protestantism. Something corresponding can be said about Republican paramilitaries. Religious traditions, I suggest, ‘secularise’ in characteristically different ways. One characteristic way in which Irish Catholicism ‘secularises’ is the way of revolutionary nationalist ideology. 

“The Irish struggle for national independence was often presented in quasi-religious terms — terms of redemptive sacrifice and national resurrection. ‘The Cause’ is presented still as something sacred, almost holy, whose ‘patriot dead’ have something of the halo of martyr-dom and sainthood.

“The fact that the Irish conflict is in part motivated by two opposing ex-religious ideologies points both to the paradoxical religious appearances of the struggle and to the impotence of the Churches to resolve it. Ex-religious ideologies retain elements of religious fervour. 

Referring to a once Christian country now massively de-Christianised, someone spoke of ‘a pagan people with Christian superstitions’. 

“It is possible to have ex-Christian people, Catholic or Protestant, with religious prejudices, passions and fanaticism. They are totally and defiantly outside all influence from the living Church. They retain, alas, some of the rancours and resentments, suspicions and fears even hates inherited from the past. I must note that the replacement of religion by ‘ideology’ need not be total; but, to speak of Republican paramilitaries, over the whole range of argument and activity connected with ‘the Cause’, these have resolutely sealed off mind and heart and conscience from all influence of Catholic Church teaching and are schooled in deafness to all appeals from clergy, bishops or Pope.”

As we enter a year of special commemoration, this speech is worth reflecting upon, in the light of both the past and the present and the future. 

(Cardinal Daly’s reference is to a passage in Fr Jacques Loew OP, En Mission Prolétarienne: Étapes vers un Apostolate Integral (Paris, 1946), p.95. Fr Loew was one of the first “worker priests” in the 1940s, enthusiastic about taking the faith rather than the Church out into the real life of the community. He was writing of the people of the Marseilles among who he laboured for three years as a docker.)

Music is a powerful thing. It has the capacity to overcome physical and mental limitations and encourage engagement and social interaction. This is the philosophy behind the Memory Lane Choir for people with dementia and memory loss, which operates out of St Agnes’ Community Centre for Music & the Arts in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin.

The centre is run by Sr Bernadette Sweeney, a Religious Sister of Charity and the former school principal of the neighbouring St Agnes’ Primary School.

Sr Bernadette is better known for her inspiring violin project for pupils which has today expanded beyond all early aspirations and becoming a success story for the Crumlin area. The St Agnes School Violin & Orchestra was started in 2006 and saw all 400 pupils at the primary school receive violins. By 2010 the level of interest being shown by parents and grandparents saw Sr Bernadette create a specific music project for them in addition to the children’s project. St Agnes’ Parents’ String Orchestra has 96 members and the majority began with no musical experience.

Since 2012 Sr Bernadette has been operating out of the new St Agnes’ Community Centre for Music & the Arts in a refurbished building belonging to the Religious Sisters of Charity at the rear of St Agnes Primary School. With Sr Bernadette as director, the centre offers a range of opportunities including dance, arts, crafts and various musical instruments.

“There are about 270 attending the centre. We have about 80 learning the keyboard and we have about 50 doing guitar,” she says.

Dementia

Her latest project, the Memory Lane Choir, came about from a request from Dublin City Council to offer support to those living with dementia.

Dementia is a term which describes a range of conditions which cause damage to the brain. This damage affects memory, thinking, language and a person’s ability to perform everyday tasks. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia.

“The choir started in May of this year,” Sr Bernadette explains. “I visited the Alzheimer groups around the area to see if there was a need. Some come from the Alzheimer’s centre and some are brought by friends and family from their own homes.”

Funding for the initial set up of the choir was provided by Dublin City Council and the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland, and the centre now fundraises to keep it going. Singing in the choir enables those with memory loss to participate in a creative, community activity in a friendly and positive environment.

“For people suffering memory loss, the last thing to go is the musical memory. Some of our members may not remember what they did yesterday but they remember the words of the songs. It is extremely therapeutic because music is a soulful expression of who they are. It is a real release. It is also a way of integration into society,” says Sr Bernadette.

“It is amazing how it has built up people’s lives. The biggest plus is that families can see loved ones with Alzheimer’s and memory loss in a happy state, whereas at home they are worried about them.”

Avril Easton co-ordinates the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland’s ‘Dementia Friendly Communities’ project, which funded the set-up of the Memory Lane Choir.

“The benefits are really obvious for people with dementia. Music is the key thing,” she says.  “It is such an equal platform. Whereas normally things are being done for them, this is a space where people are given the opportunity to be themselves and to just perform. You can’t tell the difference between the person with dementia and their carer, everyone is equal. The people feel engaged and like they belong. It’s something they enjoy and contribute to. 

“All of that may have been lost and social isolation may have been setting in and they may have started disengaging with different groups they were involved in because of their dementia. This is an opportunity to remind people that they still have something meaningful to offer and it is such a socially engaging way to do that.”

Dublin’s Lord Mayor recently asked the choir to perform at a function at the Mansion House and their numbers were boosted by members of the Crumlin Community Choir. The day The Irish Catholic visits, the combined choir was rehearsing for their performance.

One of the about 20 members of the Memory Lane Choir is Fr Pat Dwyer, an Oblate priest who used to sing in musicals in his 50 years of teaching in Australia. “The singing was not as good as this,” he jokes. “I enjoy being in the choir. It is the being together in a jovial space and the great atmosphere. Our director is wonderful. He really lifts us up, where to, I’m not sure! To the high notes!”

Gerry Noonan has been director of the choir since its official launch at the start of October. He is an experienced performer and teaches singing at the Leinster School of Music as well as directing the Crumlin Community Choir.

“I was very moved when I came to this initially,” he says. “I have been surprised that the choir is able for more and I am challenging myself to come up with more.

“Like any choir we start with a physical warm-up, a vocal warm-up, scales. It is a choir, not a sing-song. While I wouldn’t do very elaborate harmonies we would have a lot of songs where we have two melodies. We also do a few rounds and call and response songs.”

Gerry says the main difference when directing the Memory Lane Choir is that he has to bear in mind that the choir members “are not going to necessarily remember what you have done from one week to the next”. “It’s important they have the words in their books because you can’t expect them to learn them off. I would focus mainly on melodies that are easy to sing and also because many of them have sung in the past the musical memory doesn’t actually leave, so they very quickly remember the words and music of songs they have learnt before,” he says.

“They always go out feeling quite happy and I know from talking to professionals dealing with people with memory loss something like that which raises their happiness levels, keeps them in better form for the day. I think it is something that they look forward to.”

For more information on the Memory Lane Choir see http://www.stagnesmusiccrumlin.com/ or for information on the Dementia Friendly Communities see http://www.alzheimer.ie/Get-Involved/Dementia-Friendly-Communities.aspx

Parishes and dioceses across the country which have suffered the terrible devastation of a month of flooding, are reporting that an incredible community spirit has seen locals springing into action to help their neighbours.

With water levels peaking across large parts of the country, at the time of going to print more than 260 Irish homes have been flooded, with another 230 more under threat, and some 130 families have been marooned in their homes by flood waters.

Fr Declan Shannon, administrator in St Mary’s Cathedral in Athlone – where the River Shannon divides the town into two parishes and two dioceses – says the “predominant emotion” he sees in the town is a sense of solidarity since the river burst its banks and flooded the town.

“The one positive result is the community rallying together and people really looking out for each other and mucking in,” he says. “The community spirit is fantastic and many agencies are working together with 86 volunteers who have a rota set up among themselves to form a barrier made up of sandbags and plastic. The council is working very closely with them supplying pumps and the civil defence and army are a great source of support.”

Barriers

Tractors are acting as a taxi service around Athlone ferrying stranded people from their homes to get supplies, and neighbours are helping each other through the night to protect homes against the flood waters. 

Fr Shannon says many people who are fighting to protect their property from the floods are “getting exhausted at this stage” and can only sleep at night “when they can hear the pump outside”. “Those whose houses are flooded and whose houses are marooned are afraid to leave their homes. The water is coming up through the ground and it’s not just the river bursting its banks, they are contending with sewage as well. People are struggling with the sheer devastation and trying to dry the house afterwards and they are wondering is this now a regular feature of Irish winters.  But the resilence of people is incredible.”

Bishop Francis Duffy of Ardagh & Clonmacnois, who visited the floods in Athlone on Tuesday, says he wanted to offer his “support, solidarity and prayer” to those affected. “I have been talking to people who found it all very distressing and are annoyed at what happened. A lot of people are helping out and manning pumps and there is a lot of goodwill out there,” he told The Irish Catholic.

“We have prayed for those affected that relief and assistance will be available to all concerned and we also pray for those in the emergency services and voluntary bodies that their work will bring relief and reassurance to all. Let us hope that co-ordinated and effective measures can be taken to prevent such disastrous results from reoccurring.”

Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, which covers the other side of Athlone, said “emergencies tend to bring out the best in us” and “between the army and the volunteers in Athlone, the sand-bags have been filled and put in place and the pumps are working away”.

Bishop John Buckley of Cork & Ross recently visited Bandon and Clonakilty, which have both suffered extensive flood damage, and he has called on the Government to take action to protect the towns. “This is the second time they have been hit and I think it should have been addressed. In 2009 they were promised remedial measures would be taken but they were never implemented. Insurance companies should also give a speedy response but these things take months if not years. Sadly I have been told that for people in low lying areas that insurance companies won’t cover them. That’s a very serious development. 

“Neighbours and friends are very upset and apparently it is not over yet as rain is forecast for the weekend. I know the State is responding but it should have responded sooner. We got a warning in 2009 and that was the time to act,” he told The Irish Catholic. 

“In West Cork some people are housebound because the roads are closed by flooding. People being are being supportive and helpful and are watching out for elderly neighbours, which is marvellous to see. Good neighbourliness so important,” he said.

In Enniscorthy, where President Michael D. Higgins visited flood victims on Monday, most damage has occurred on Shannon and Abbey quays, Templeshannon Street, Island Road and the Promenade. A total of 100 properties – both homes and businsses – were evacuated, according to Wexford County Council.

Solidarity

Fr Billy Swan, curate in St Aidan’s Cathedral in Enniscorthy said the flooding on New Year’s Eve was the worse he has ever seen. “I feel most sorry for homeowners, but it is tough on business too,” he says. “There is a great spirit of solidarity among people experiencing genuine hardships. There are plans to put up flood defences and for those affected that can’t come quick enough. On Saturday I was talking to a couple on Island Road and lucky for them the water came in the front room but not up to the kitchen, which is two steps up. People are helping neighbours and being attentive to those who are most vulnerable. One guy I spoke to it was his job on the street to constantly monitor the water levels, even during the night and phone his neighbours when it was time to evacuate.”

Bishop Denis Brennan, who lived in Enniscorthy for 27 years, said the “thoughts and prayers of many here in Ferns diocese are with those whose homes and businesses have been affected by the recent severe flooding”. “Many are endeavouring to help, emergency measures have been introduced and long term solutions are on the table... but the pain, anxiety and grief of the locals is evident in what has been a recurrence of a problem and one that needs to be solved once and for all,” Bishop Brennan said. 

Neighbours

“Special mention needs to be made of the friends and neighbours of people whose houses have been flooded and of the emergency agencies and local authority who have been very busy in seeking to alleviate the stress caused.”

Reacting to the community spirit seen in flooded areas Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry said “it seems that solidarity is best seen when people are afflicted by problems at their own doorstep”. “The recent floods in these islands have generated huge amounts of generosity and self-sacrifice. As was always the case, those who have least tend to share most,” he said.

Bishop Martin Drennan of the Diocese of Galway told The Irish Catholic he was “anxious and concerned about the very severe impact of flooding on the people of south Galway and north Clare”. He said “farmers and householders who have been inundated” are foremost in his thoughts and prayers “as are any older or vulnerable people whose welfare and well-being had been compromised”. 

Bishop Drennan praised the “tremendous work undertaken by neighbours, volunteers and public service personnel in recent days”. “In the face of adversity the local community has been outstanding. In this diocese the traditional, deep-rooted response to difficult situations has always been one of meitheal, of co-operation and fellowship. Such a response has to be admired and nurtured,” he said. 

The bishop said he continues to pray for an improvement in the weather and, together with Pope Francis, he “advocates a renewed appreciation and understanding of our natural world and the forces that impact on it”.

Canada is a very secular nation, unlike its neighbour to the south. The face of religion is very much a private one. Canada may not have a doctrine of laïcité in theory, but in practice it painstakingly avoids the public interface of faith and political life.

Canada is a tolerant country, has nothing comparable to the polarisation and culture wars that define the political and social landscape in the US, and is viewed as an ideal place to immigrate to because of its reputation for neutrality, fairness and an impressively peaceful environment.

It is a serious flaw in the Canadian reality, however, that the marginalisation of faith is seen by many as the guarantor of political concord. It is a false peace, an unnecessary arrangement driven by the conviction that religious faith is by its nature divisive and best controlled by excluding it from the public stage. And this in a nation where many of its most prominent political personages – the prime minister, the governor-general and several of its premiers – are people of ardent religious commitment.

No religious community has suffered as precipitous a decline in national influence as Catholicism:  A gutted Quebec church, a staggering rise in the proportion of the country that identifies as “nones” in numerous surveys and polls, composed in great part of lapsed Catholics and the virtual disappearance of any meaningful Catholic presence in the media. 

Stellar figures

But by no means is all stark and grim. The Church can boast many stellar figures who have shaped the human quest for meaning:  Marshall McLuhan, the communications theorist; Bernard Lonergan, the foundational thinker; David Stanley and R. A. F. MacKenzie, biblical scholars; Mary-Jo Leddy, social activist and refugee champion; Ronald Rolheiser, spiritual writer of international scope; Charles Taylor, finest political philosopher in the Americas; and the list goes on.

For many, at the top of that list, one can find the storied founder of L’Arche – the global network of communities for and with the intellectually challenged – the formidably charismatic Jean Vanier.

Winner of the Templeton Prize for Religion, close confident of Popes and civic leaders, prolific writer of dozens of books, and a spiritual mentor for countless people irrespective religion, ethnicity, or political persuasion, Vanier is the Canadian figure who can straddle the secular-religious divide, find credibility in circles otherwise hostile or indifferent to religious faith of any iteration, and remind believers themselves that the call of their faith is to lead them outside their tribal comfort zone, to propel them to service, to the creation of genuine community, the most arduous, most noble and most beautiful of human endeavours.

Vanier has once again been showcased in Canada’s premier paper of record and influence, The Globe and Mail, by its award-winning features writer, Ian Brown. Attracted by Vanier’s serenity, luminous intelligence, non-judgemental attitude towards others and searingly transparent recognition of his own vulnerabilities, Brown has been tracking the Canadian resident of France for years now.  He is haunted by his holiness.

Brown is no hagiographer, has little interest in God questions (all his writing is shorn of theological discourse or even familiarity with the language of faith), and seems surprised if not puzzled by Vanier’s Catholicism.  

But he does ‘get’ it; he grasps the essential Vanier; he is drawn to Vanier’s deep humanism.

With a profoundly disabled son, Walker, Brown has been on a personal journey of suffering, aching to know how best to squeeze meaning from despair, desperate to find purpose in his son’s broken existence, resolved to discover context and hope where there seems only darkness – in his life, if not that of Walker’s. Vanier has given him solace, questions to feed questions, the primitive purity of personal authenticity. 

He has shared with him his own fragility; he has offered him tenderness and understanding. He speaks not to convert but to unite in the redemptive co-sympathy of Christian love. He tells a story, a true story to his earnest interlocutor:

“A young man with disabilities wanted to win the 100-metre race. And he got into the finals. And he was running like crazy to get the gold medal, and somebody in the next lane tripped.  And he stopped and picked this guy up, and they ran together and both of them were the last.”

“That’s a true story,” Mr Vanier confirmed.  “It’s the deepest lesson the disabled have to teach. It’s not that they can become like us - but how can we become like them and have fun together.  And lift up the chap who has fallen on the other lane, and come in last.  There’s in us all an ego we have to conquer.  You kill the ego so the real person can rise up. And the real person is the one who’s learning to love.”

By means of this story, Vanier relays to Brown, and to all who will attend, the simple but revolutionary fact that it is our capacity to love that frees us, that all the decorations, accolades and achievements we can muster, all the tokens of our success we are awarded, are as nothing when compared to the humanising reciprocity that comes from loving and being loved.  The disabled are our teachers in this; their vulnerability is an opening to our freedom.

So in this proudly secular country of Canada, in its most secular news organ, and not for the first time, it sees in the enduring witness of Jean Vanier a spiritual point of reference in the turbulent seas of contemporary discord, an aperture to its own disquieted soul.  

There’s a redeeming honesty in this, for sure.

Michael W. Higgins is the author of Jean Vanier: Logician of the Heart which is due to be published soon and will give a talk entitled ‘Jean Vanier and the Year of Mercy’ at The Irish Catholic offices in Dublin on Thursday, January 14.

When one thinks of sports that Irish Olympians have excelled at in recent years boxing and show jumping are probably the first things that come to mind. But what about the winter Olympics? Most people draw a blank.

It’s this perception that Co. Down-based Kelly Gallagher (30) is changing. In 2010 she became the first athlete from Northern Ireland to compete in the Winter Paralympics. Just four years later, in Sochi, she won the first ever Winter Paralympic gold medal representing Team GB.

When one reflects on the fact that the genetic condition oculocutaneous albinism severely limits her sight, the success is all the more impressive.

It was while on holidays with her parents that winter sports first emerged as an option. They had been on holidays in France and took the option to visit the Marian shrine at Lourdes.

“Lourdes was really lovely,” she recalls. And, after praying at the grotto, the family holiday continued. It was on a stopover in the tiny principality of Andorra, nestled in the eastern Pyrenees that Kelly first thought of the slopes.

Ski lesson

“We were looking around and I decided to have a ski lesson and really enjoyed it. I remember, I took to it very intuitively and really enjoyed it,” she recalls. And the rest is history. She returned home and after more lessons and soul searching, decided to quit her job to enrol at the Sports Institute and take up skiing full time.

When I meet Kelly in the lobby of a Dublin hotel she wears her talent lightly gently dropping in to conversation phrases like “when we won the medal” and “being an Olympian”. Yet, there is no smugness or grandiosity. “I’m known as a skier,” she observes, before quickly backtracking and adding with a laugh “well, not really known at all”. She is witty and humorous, qualities that one imagines are vital during the long days and weeks spent in virtual isolation during training camps.

Kelly was determined from a young age that her visual impairment wouldn’t hold her back.

“Within sport, there are so many people who have overcome so much. Within the disabled skiing community, you don’t see anyone being anything but encouraging and showing you how they’ve done it before. 

“Outside of that, I had never been brought up to think ‘oh, if someone hasn’t done it before it isn’t for me’. I had always been brought up with encouragement,” she says.

Kelly admits that the main challenge she struggles with is the same thing facing every amateur athlete: “A lack of funding and that kind of support rather than a lack of imagination or a lack of encouragement.”

While she feels greatly supported, she is frustrated sometimes that Paralympic sports do not receive the attention they deserve.

“With Paralympic sport, and winter sport and women’s sport, there’s still an idea that it’s not that important. In the media, it’s not covered to the same extent, so people don’t really know about you,” she says. 

However, her experience has been that when people do know, “they are delighted to get behind local Paralympic hopefuls”. However, she is convinced that “while we really only have coverage of the major professional sports it’s hard to get commercial sponsorship from businesses because their money is better invested in their local GAA club, in their local rugby club – in something where they’re actually going to get coverage. 

“So I can see it from a business point of view: Paralympic sports isn’t there yet, hopefully in 20 or 30 years whenever there are younger Paralympians, coming up they’ll have a far easier time”.

Debut

Kelly made her Paralympic debut in Vancouver in 2010, finishing fourth and sixth in two disciplines; the same year, her father, who was a pilot, was diagnosed with cancer in his left eye. He had the eye removed – then set about regaining his flying licences. Kelly recalls his return to the skies as a “very special time”. 

But, just months later, in a cruel twist of fate, a routine MRI scan revealed that her father’s cancer had returned, and was inoperable. Kelly was recovering from injury and so was able to be with him for his last months – “maybe my own injury was fortunate” – and she felt relieved that his suffering wasn’t prolonged. His death in 2012 left her with a stark choice. “I was either going to throw everything I had at my racing, or I was going to leave. And it didn’t feel right to leave”.

“When I started skiing, it was just for pure enjoyment. But then I figured out there were other people who were visually-impaired and they were racing, and I wanted to have a go just to see what it was like. So I got involved, and once I had done my first races and saw that I could possibly get to the Olympic Games, that was my goal, and then when I got to the games in 2010 and did okay, but not amazing, I was thinking to myself well, if I can get training, and improve myself, hopefully in four years’ time, I’ll be able to challenge for a medal and then Sochi was my goal.

“It was never really my goal from the very start, but as I got more and more involved, I started to love it more and more, and after Daddy died, I gave it everything,” she says.

The Sochi Winter Olympics took place against a backdrop of criticism of the increasingly-authoritarian regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some even advocated a boycott. But Kelly is clear, the political temperature is not something that athletes can let affect them.

“In my life outside of skiing, I have opinions and think different things and have different ideas about so many different things, but in skiing I had worked for five or six years to get to those games.

“You can’t let it be part of your business if your business is to win a gold medal, and that it what I was going there for,” she says with the confidence that, perhaps, only an Olympic gold medallist can manage.

And how was winning the gold medal? “It was more of a relief the a dream come true, because I had been working at it for so long, winning quieter races where there was no coverage.

“When we won our gold medal, a lot of the media were talking about how we were unknowns, we were only unknowns because they hadn’t been covering our sport!” she says.

Kipling’s advice is to treat triumph and disaster as “two impostors just the same”. And for Kelly, as well as success, there are failures too and Sochi was no different. “I had skied in the downhill two days earlier, and I had done really poorly. I was so miserable because I couldn’t understand how I had done so badly. I went to the church in the Olympic village to sit there and be miserable, because you can’t sit around with all your team mates and be miserable because they’re all competing and need to keep focused.

“The church was a place where I could find quiet time and reflect. I had a good old cry to myself, and tried to pick myself up. So, when I won the medal two days later, you are also presented with a bouquet of flowers, and I thought to myself, ‘now, I have to give something back to my little quiet place’, so I brought my flowers back and laid them in the church,” she recalls.

Faith

Like many people, Kelly is slow to talk about her faith. But it is clearly an important part of her life. “You end up questioning lots of things when you’re in sport. People think that sport is fair, sport is not fair, sometimes you’ll be disqualified for a wrong reason, or you won’t compete as well as you know you can.”

But then other times, it’s almost as if she can feel the hand of God, she says. “You’ll do one race and you’ll wonder was that me doing that, or was it like Jesus or God helping me.

“There are many times as well when I’ve been injured that I’ve had to rely on my faith. Then with my father dying, faith was so important,” she says.

Kelly hesitates before sharing another anecdote with me. “I don’t know if this is too rude,” she wonders aloud, “but here goes.”

“My mum is very worried about me when I race, because we’re racing at speeds of 70mph, and I remember her saying to me one time, ‘I prayed for you, and I prayed for Our Lady to put her cloak of safety around you’ and I remember saying ‘could you make sure the cloak is light and streamlined, so it doesn’t slow me down, but will protect me at the same time!’

“When you’re doing something dangerous, or something that’s risky, you do hope that God is protecting you. Prayers definitely don’t go a miss – I do end up praying and relying on my faith so much,” she says.

In between training and competing, Kelly is working with the agency Sightsavers to help change perceptions of people with disabilities in developing countries to ensure they have the same opportunities as anyone else.

“The work I’m doing with Sightsavers is all about social inclusion in an educational setting.

“For me, I’m known for being a ski racer, and I have a visual impairment. But, I was very lucky to go to primary school and be included in mainstream secondary school, and then again in university, and university was hard, but the opportunity to go to mainstream schools meant I was able to get a degree, I was able to apply for a job in the civil service.

“The fact that I had a job meant that I was able to leave my job and go ski racing. It opened up so many opportunities for me to be independent and guide my own destiny,” she says.

Around 57 million children worldwide are still out of school and at least 19 million have a disability. In most developing countries children with disabilities are more likely to be out of school than any other group of children.

Kelly has travelled to Senegal in West Africa to witness a Sightsavers pilot programme to include children with visual impairments in mainstream schools. She met with a number of children who, thanks to specially trained teachers and equipment such as Braille, are now able to attend school and learn alongside their peers.

Kelly is adamant that a quality education is one of the keys to empowerment; raising self-esteem, gaining employment and lifting people out of poverty.

“I remember going into my primary school class and it essentially being me as the visually impaired child, the teacher as the teacher, and the other children as learners. I felt excluded, even though I was within the classroom. And although I had the right to be there, I’m not entirely sure the teachers were prepared with how to cope with a child with a visual impairment. 

“The teachers I met in Senegal however are much more prepared. They’re able to make Braille, write in Braille and check the work in Braille. And they’re doing it in a way that ensures every child in the class is working. For me, that is true inclusivity,” she says.

The children who remain out of school are those who are the most marginalised and hardest to reach, including those with disabilities, girls, children in fragile and conflict-affected states, those from ethnic minority backgrounds and children who live in remote rural areas or slums.

Children will “never be able to transform their own lives unless they are in school and can get an education,” Kelly insists. Sightsavers are currently working with teachers in 30 countries to help them include children who are visually impaired in their classes. “These physical difficulties shouldn’t be a barrier to education, and the ideal situation is that these children can attend the local school, and be taught by the local teacher, and go to school with people they know rather than having to go off on to the school for the blind, and live there with other blind teenagers.

“For me, working with Sightsavers is very special. Imagine if I hadn’t have had the opportunities I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, and it wouldn’t have been because of aptitude for learning, it would’ve been because of a stigma or because our community hadn’t decided that it’s good to have children in school”. 

And, it’s not only good for the child who has a disability or a visual impairment, it’s good for all the other children too and the wider community. If you reflect society within the classroom, it helps society grow together.

What does the future hold? “I’m skiing with a different girl now, Charlotte [Evans], the girl I was skiing with is going off to persue different things…I’m seeing how we can get on this season, be safe and be fast, so I’ll be able to come back in March or April and be able to say clearly that I’m going to the games in 2018 in South Korea - that’s my goal.

“I also want to pay more attention to my family and friends,” she says.

When we meet, Kelly is about to head off for more training meaning she will leave friends and family behind. But, in the isolation, her faith also helps her find peace and solace. “Whenever I am in Austria, on my day off, I love to go for a walk. I’ve been to so many Austrian churches, and they’re on beautiful hill sides, and I find great peace there.

“So, it’s like my thing now, whenever I go to a new resort, I have a look and find the local church and it’s really special to me. It’s really beautiful to go to Mass, and it’s all in German, so I don’t understand any of it, but it’s a really beautiful experience for me,” she says.

Wanderings

Her wanderings in Austrian valleys have also opened up a new spirituality that combines faith and nature. “Quite often in the valleys there are beautiful walks set out with the Stations of the Cross, so you’re getting a really lovely walk but also a spiritual experience. The Alps are dotted with crosses, and grottos, and tiny little churches, it’s a constant reminder of faith and spirituality.

“It’s much more traditional, everything closes on a Sunday, and it’s wonderful to hear the church bells and understand that faith is real and present. We’re like little travellers that are always going to Mass in different parts of the world, but it’s really lovely to see how people are practising Catholicism or Christianity in very different parts of the world and what it means to them,” she says.

Fr Éamonn Fitzgibbon

Bishop Brendan Leahy announced in September 2014 his intention to hold a diocesan Synod by means of a pastoral letter entitled Together In Mission: A Time to Begin Again, inviting all of us to go together on a Camino, an appropriate metaphor since the word Synod means ‘journeying together’ or literally ‘with someone on the road’.

Camino

Over the years I have walked many different stages of the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. I have sometimes walked with organised groups and at other times walked for weeks on my own. I have been on the busy Camino Frances and the very quiet Via de la Plata from the South. For this reason, I was very struck by the image of Camino used by Bishop Brendan. Over the last eighteen months I have often thought how fitting the comparison is. 

When one walks the Camino, you can plan and study maps and guides but the way is still somewhat unknown and the path is only truly made by walking it. Pilgrims on the Camino quickly learn that one needs to be able to let go of many things and truly travel light. One has to be willing to ask for direction. 

While the arrival in Santiago (or wherever one’s destination may be) is always the goal, the journey is in many ways more important than the destination. Companionship along the way (even when walking alone) is extremely important. 

Finally, the route can seem long and arduous and, if viewed in its entirety, daunting or even impossible – but day by day one moves forward consoled with the thought that ‘I am where I need to be for now’.

Synod journey

It is said of a diocesan synod that it is both a process and an event – in other words the journey and the destination – and I have learned that the journey is hugely important; patience and persistence is key. Again it is also said of a synod that while the meeting is important the gathering is even more so – in other words the agenda and the task of the three day meeting is of course very significant but of equal (if not greater importance) is the gathering of people who are present at the meeting.

When I was asked by Bishop Brendan to coordinate the synod I found myself daunted by the task ahead – in fact when I think of it all I tend to panic – but day by day we have progressed along the way and I regularly console myself that ‘we are where we need to be for now’.  Most importantly, I have learned that one cannot walk this way alone but only with others.

Along the way I have had to let go of many things – my expectations or plans for example – and trust in God’s Spirit and the wisdom of other wayfarers and wise guides. 

As I reflect on the journey thus far the most encouraging piece is the presence of so many delegates. Just over twelve months ago this was the biggest task – recruiting delegates from parishes and communities across the diocese who would truly reflect the diversity and richness of our diocesan community. 

Happily we have ended up with a tremendous group of delegates – over 400 in all. Together we have learned what it means to be a delegate to a Synod and have walked the way towards April. I have been hugely heartened by the commitment and enthusiasm of our delegates. They freely give up their time to attend various in-service and formation events, they carry out Synod tasks in their own communities and they remain enthusiastic and optimistic.

I have learned to trust the delegates recognising that their wisdom is of the Spirit. This trust has led to an entrusting whereby it is the delegates who chart the course and determine the direction. They carried out the enormous task of listening to their communities – using a variety of methods to discern the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of the people with whom they live and work. Subsequently the delegates have discerned and selected the themes which we will bring forward to the synod.

Gatherings

Along the way we have had wonderful gatherings. I am thinking of the initial, introductory gathering in Mary Immaculate College with Dominican theologian Fr Paul Philibert, the orientation day last January in the Radisson Hotel, the review in Thomond Park, and of course the prayerful reflective day of discernment in the Strand Hotel when the six synod themes were selected.

The synod journey thus far has truly been a ‘ground up’ approach whereby the experience of the people in our parishes and communities has been recognised as the place of God’s presence and the Spirit’s voice. It has been a genuine attempt to model theological reflection whereby the experience of people – gleaned from the listening process in the spring – has been put into dialogue with aspects of our tradition.

For me all of this has been very exciting. I have studied the theory and methodology of theological reflection and now have the opportunity to be involved in applying it in a real situation. Thus far my involvement in the synod has been an opportunity to learn and listen, to reflect and wonder.

Highlights

There have been a number of particular highlights. One moment along the way was figuring out how best to sort out or analyse all the data or material that came in from the parishes and communities from the Listening Process. 

Approximately 5,000 people expressed their views by means of questionnaires or at meetings or on-line. Indeed other creative methods were used including Facebook, informal listening methods and others. We were faced with a vast amount of material presented in a number of different formats. 

An even greater challenge was to be true to a discernment method. To complete this task we assembled fifteen people who would help and they in turn attended a ‘fishbowl’ type training in which they ‘eavesdropped’ on six ‘experts’ from different disciplines. It was truly fascinating to hear how others would undertake the task and we were able to draw on the different expertise to come up with solid guidelines to ensure consistency across all fifteen workers. 

I won’t pretend the actual task of going through the material was terribly exciting in itself but it was an honour and humbling to be in a position to read through and listen to the voice of the people. It is also a source of pride that we can honestly say that in spite of the vast amount of material we read through and took account of each and every contribution.

It has also been a unique privilege for me as the one who has responsibility for coordinating the various aspects of the synod that I have had direct and personal contact with some wonderful and truly inspiring people. I had read and studied the theological writings of Fr Paul Philibert and was fortunate to be in a position to invite him to Ireland and during his stay to spend a deal of time in his company. 

Similarly in the course of the year I had the privilege of meeting Níall McLaughlin, the renowned architect, and of course, Sir Harry Burns, the former chief medical officer for Scotland. When I say this is a perk of the job I mean so sincerely. Of course there has also been the interaction with many people locally who have acted as wise guides to us on our journey – people like Niamh Hourigan, John Weafer, Fr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ, Jessie Rogers, Rosemary O’Connor and many others. 

A great joy for me has been the opportunity to plan and reflect with our local prophet to his own land Martin Kennedy. When I say that one does not travel alone on a Camino I am fortunate that we have had the members of the Preparatory Commission and local facilitators and trainers who have been hugely important on the road.

Resources

In the Diocese of Limerick we are fortunate to have so many wonderful resources available to us, none more so than the resource that is Mary Immaculate College. The Department of Theology and Religious Studies has contributed greatly and of course the synod event itself will take place in the college – as have a number of the events over the last twelve months. 

We have been involved in a very interesting project with the Geography Department at Mary Immaculate College. Dr Brendan O’Keeffe and Dr Shane O’Sullivan have mapped the findings of the 2011 census to our parishes. Considering that the CSO and the parishes have two differing boundaries this is no small task but it means that we now have a very good sense of who our parishes are. 

We know with strong accuracy how many people live in each parish, and what is their age, education, employment, gender, affluence or poverty levels, religious affiliation, family make-up etc. 

Final piece

It is the final piece in the three-way conversation of a genuine theological reflection bringing in context or culture to the dialogue. For me personally it has been a joy to work with and watch these social geographers plying their trade. Indeed, it has been one part of a much wider engagement by the Church in the wider world.

That positive engagement with the wider world is congruent with a position whereby the synod process recognises God’s activity in the world. The synod must not be overly ‘churchy’ in a narrow sense, it must not become inward looking but be truly missionary, reaching out and looking to the community at large. We recognise God’s activity in so many situations and are part of a shift whereby we might be less preoccupied with getting people back in to the Church as becoming preoccupied with going out to where people are living out their lives.

I am greatly encouraged by Bishop Leahy’s optimism and his confidence in the Spirit’s guidance. I also recognise his courageous commitment to change which can only augur well for the legacy of the synod post-April.

Over the last few months I have travelled throughout the diocese and have been meeting groups of delegates. I am struck by the truly transformative effect that being on this journey together has been on us all. It is still true that occasionally I think too far ahead and a little panic creeps in but then I remind myself: ‘We are where we need to be’.

'I’m glad I was asked’–Delegate

Cormac Behan shares his reflections on his personal synod journey as a delegate

Once upon a time, when I was a young man, I was approached by an envoy in a local night-club on behalf of a friend who had apparently taken a shine to me. She pointed towards three girls standing in the corner and, in my eagerness (though some might say desperation), I hastily made my way towards the group. Upon arriving, I asked the girl who I thought was the prettiest for a dance but she answered no, that it was her friend I should ask. When I asked the second, she told me that it wasn’t her either, but the third.

When I was asked to become a local delegate for what was introduced to me as a synod, I felt that, like the third girl, I must have been at the end of a long line of rejections. I wasn’t involved in the parish life in any meaningful way and I certainly didn’t sing the loudest at mass.

Curious

Our local priest was a good man and I didn’t like to say no. However, there were other reasons. I was worried and I was curious. Worried because of the creeping decline in my local area, a small rural parish in West Limerick, the local church being one of a few pillars that was creaking under the strain. Curious, because I wanted to know what, if anything, could be done to help arrest this decline.

At the first gathering of delegates in Mary Immaculate College, I expected to be engulfed in a flood of complex theological and philosophical arguments. Instead, I had the good fortune of listening to the words of Fr Paul Philibert, a US-based Dominican. He told us that we must no longer think of Mass as something that is done for us yet without us. His message was that we should face the new challenges that lay ahead in a spirit of hope. Bishop Brendan Leahy, who launched the synod, told us that the word means a ‘journey’ and that nobody should be a stranger on this journey.

Spirit

It was in this spirit that we embarked on our own journey. The biggest body of work was the information-gathering process where we were asked to elicit the opinions of people in our parishes. The main aim of our own local group was to give every person in the parish an opportunity to have their say, good or bad. We tried to reach out to as many people as possible.

There have been challenges along the way. We distributed a questionnaire that was well received but my idea to use social media as a way as connecting with those who might not otherwise engage didn’t quite catch fire. That we got over any bumps was thanks to the mutual support of our fellow local parish delegates. I was lucky to be part of such a great team. 

Uplifting experiences

There has also been some uplifting experiences. The responses to the questionnaires were well thought out and sincere. As a Primary School teacher, I had a discussion with my fifth and sixth class over a couple of days on what the synod meant, or could mean, to them. I was truly heartened by their frank and honest responses underpinned as they were by positivity and optimism that children have in abundance. Therein, perhaps, lies the hope that everyone speaks so much about.

Now that that the six themes for next April’s Synod have been selected, we have been attending a series of gatherings which have been both interesting and informative. They have helped us broaden and deepen our understanding of many of the complex issues involved.

So now, as we fast approach next April and beyond, I wonder that further twists on my own Camino lie ahead. It has been an informative and interesting journey and one which has been a great privilege in which to be involved. Now, unlike the third girl in my story, I’m glad I was asked.

Pope Francis’ first book The Name of God is Mercy is published this week. Here The Irish Catholic carries extracts from the book. In his almost three years as Pope, Francis has urged all Catholics, especially priests and bishops, to get out of their comfortable church buildings and take the message of God directly to those in need, the marginalised and the desperate – as he himself did when Archbishop of Buenos Aires, travelling every week to the city’s shanty towns. This, he explains, is the work of mercy.

“To follow the way of the Lord, the Church is called on to dispense its mercy over all those who recognise themselves as sinners, who assume responsibility for the evil they have committed, and who feel in need of forgiveness. The Church does not exist to condemn people, but to bring about an encounter with the visceral love of God’s mercy.

“I often say that in order for this to happen, it is necessary to go out: to go out from the churches and the parishes, to go outside and look for people where they live, where they suffer, and where they hope. I like to use the image of a field hospital to describe this ‘Church that goes forth’. It exists where there is combat. It is not a solid structure with all the equipment where people go to receive treatment for both small and large infirmities. It is a mobile structure that offers first aid and immediate care, so that its soldiers do not die.

“It is a place for urgent care, not a place to see a specialist. I hope that the Jubilee [The Holy Year of Mercy] will serve to reveal the Church’s deeply maternal and merciful side, a Church that goes forth toward those who are ‘wounded’, who are in need of an attentive ear, understanding,
forgiveness and love.”

‘I am a sinner’

– As he explores the importance of mercy in the Church’s mission in a modern world that no longer knows how to cure its wounds – or even if it is possible - Pope Francis draws on the wisdom of his predecessor but two, Pope John I (Cardinal Albino Luciani), who reigned for just 33 days in 1978, to illustrate that all of us are sinners, even those who hold the highest offices in the Church.

“There is the homily when Albino Luciani said he had been chosen because the Lord preferred that certain things not be engraved in bronze or marble but in the dust, so that if the writing had remained, it would have been clear that the merit was all and only God’s. He, the bishop and future Pope John Paul I, called himself ‘dust’.

“I have to say that when I speak of this, I always think of what [the apostle] Peter told Jesus on the Sunday of his resurrection, when he met him on his own, a meeting hinted at in the Gospel of Luke. What might Peter have said to the Messiah upon his resurrection from the tomb? Might he have said that he felt like a sinner? 

“He must have thought of his betrayal, of what had happened a few days earlier when he pretended three times not to recognise Jesus in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house. He must have thought of his bitter and public tears.

“If Peter did all of that, if the Gospels describe his sin and denials to us, and if despite all this Jesus said [to him], ‘tend my sheep’ (John 21), I don’t think we should be surprised if his successors describe themselves as sinners. It is nothing new.” 

‘I deserve to be in prison’

– There is, Pope Francis tells his interviewer, no-one who is beyond God’s mercy, whatever they have done in their lives.

“The Pope is a man who needs the mercy of God. I said it sincerely to the prisoners of Palmasola, in Bolivia [during his July 2015 visit to their country], to those men and women who welcomed me so warmly. I reminded them that even St Peter and St Paul had been prisoners.

“I have a special relationship with people in prisons, deprived of their freedom. I have always been very attached to them, precisely because of my awareness of being a sinner. Every time I go through the gates into a prison to celebrate Mass or for a visit, I always think: why them and not me? I should be here. I deserve to be here. Their fall could have been mine. I do not feel superior to the people who stand before me.

“And so I repeat and pray: why him and not me? It might seem shocking, but I derive consolation from Peter: he betrayed Jesus, and even so he was chosen.”

‘Why the sinner is always welcome’

– Each of us has to open the door “a crack” to recognise our own sinfulness , Pope Francis urges, to receive mercy. His remarks will be read with particular attention by divorced and gay Catholics, some of whom have argued at the time of the recent synods in Rome that the failure of their marriage, or their sexuality, should not be seen as a sin.

“The Church condemns sin because it has to relay the truth: ‘this is a sin’. But at the same time, it embraces the sinner who recognises himself as such, it welcomes him, it speaks to him of the infinite mercy of God. Jesus forgave even those who crucified and scorned him.

“We must go back to the Gospel. We find that it speaks not only of welcoming and forgiveness but also of the “feast” for the returning son.

“The expression of mercy is the joy of the feast, and that is well expressed in the Gospel of Luke: ‘I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance’.

“It does not say: and if he should then relapse and go back to his ways and commit more sins, that’s his problem! No, when Peter asked how many times he should forgive someone, Jesus said, not seven times but seventy times seven. Or in other words, always.

“Precisely because there is sin in the world, precisely because our human nature is wounded by original sin, God, who delivered his son for us, revealed himself as mercy.”

‘The scandalous double life of Christians’

– Failure to recognise our own sinfulness, suggests Pope Francis, can result in a “corruption” of those who claim to Christians. Though his remarks in the interview are not directed to any group in particular, his use of words such as “corruption” and “scandal” echo those he has deployed in pursuit of his reforms of the Vatican curia. In December 2014, he accused a gathering of officials there of suffering 15 ailments including the “pathology of power” and “accumulating material goods”.

“Corruption is the sin which, rather than being recognised as such and rendering us humble, is elevated to a system; it becomes a mental habit, a way of living. We no longer feel the need for forgiveness and mercy, but we justify ourselves and our behaviours.

“Jesus says to his disciples: even if your brother offends you seven times a day, and seven times a day he returns to you to ask for forgiveness, forgive him. The repentant sinner, who sins again and again because of his weakness, will find forgiveness if he acknowledges his need for mercy. The corrupt man is the one who sins but does not repent, who sins and pretends to be Christian, and it is this double life that is scandalous.

“The corrupt man does not know humility, he does not consider himself in need of help, he leads a double life. We must not accept the state of corruption as if it were just another sin. Even though corruption is often identified with sin, in fact they are two distinct realities, 

albeit interconnected. Sin, especially if repeated, can lead to corruption, not quantitatively—in the sense that a certain number of sins makes a person corrupt—but rather qualitatively: habits are formed that limit one’s capacity for love and create a false sense of self-sufficiency.

“The corrupt man tires of asking for forgiveness and ends up believing that he doesn’t need to ask for it any more. We don’t become corrupt people overnight. It is a long, slippery slope that cannot be identified simply as a series of sins. One may be a great sinner and never fall into corruption if hearts feel their own weakness. That small opening allows the strength of God to enter.

“When a sinner recognises himself as such, he admits in some way that what he was attached to, or clings to, is false. The corrupt man hides what he considers his true treasure, but which really makes him a slave and masks his vice with good manners, always managing to keep up appearances.”

‘I felt as though I had been abandoned’

– Pope Francis recalls how, as a teenager growing up in Buenos Aires in the early 1950s, already considering his own vocation, a visiting priest to the Bergoglio family’s parish of San Jose in the Flores district taught him, when he went to confession, all about the mercy of God. 

“I don’t have any particular memories of mercy as a young child. But I do as a young man. I think of Fr Carlos Duarte Ibarra, the confessor I met in my parish church on September 21, 1953, the day the Church celebrated Saint Matthew, the apostle and evangelist. I was 17 years old. On confessing myself to him, I felt welcomed by the mercy of God.

“Ibarra was originally from Corrientes but was in Buenos Aires to receive treatment for leukaemia. He died the following year.  I still remember how when I got home, after his funeral and burial, I felt as though I had been abandoned. And I cried a lot that night, really a lot, and hid in my room. 

“Why? Because I had lost a person who helped me feel the mercy of God, that miserando atque eligendo, an expression I didn’t know at the time but I eventually would choose as my episcopal motto. I learned about it later, in the homilies of the English monk, the Venerable Bede (672-735). When describing the calling of Matthew, he writes: “Jesus saw the tax collector and by having mercy chose him as an apostle saying to him, ‘follow me’.”

“This is the translation commonly given for the words of St Bede [originally written in Latin]. I like to translate ‘miserando’ with another gerund that doesn’t exist: misericordando or mercying. So, ‘mercying him and choosing him’ describes the vision of Jesus who gives the gift of mercy and chooses, and takes with him.”

Extracted from: The Name of God is Mercy: A Conversation with Andrea Tornielli by Pope Francis, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky, was published by Bluebird Books on January 12 at €18.99.

Sarah Mac Donald

As the year of centenaries and elections begins to unfold, opinions on party manifestos and commemorative events are reaching a crescendo. Amid the clamouring views, one authoritative voice, with an all-island perspective, needs to be heard. 

Archbishop Richard Clarke is the Church of Ireland Primate of All Ireland. Members of his flock are found north and south of the border. Indeed, one of the flock, Arlene Foster, is now at the helm in Northern Ireland as First Minister and leader of the DUP. 

Discussing the significance of 2016 with The Irish Catholic, Archbishop Clarke appealed to people on both sides of the border “not to confine themselves to marking either the Easter Rising or the Somme but to allow the totality of what is being commemorated to be celebrated together”. He hopes the people of Ireland “will have the maturity” not to make the commemoration an either/or in relation to the Rising and the Battle of the Somme, because “there is too much grey” and people need a more nuanced understanding of both. 

His comments have a special resonance in view of the new First Minister’s signal that she would not attend centenary celebrations of the 1916 Rising in Dublin. For Foster, honouring the Easter Rising would be a betrayal of the State she is loyal to and would pay homage to republicans who took up arms against that state while lacking a popular mandate. That would pave the way for republicans in the North to draw parallels between their ‘struggle’ and that of 1916. 

Arlene Foster is someone Archbishop Clarke knows “reasonably well” and is “a person I like very much”. He is pleased that a member of the Church of Ireland is “involved at this level in political life” because Anglicans in Ireland “have had a very low profile in political life particularly in recent times”. 

Involvement

This, the 66 year old observes, has been one of the aspects of their life in the Republic, where they have had “relatively little involvement in the upper aspect of political life” with the exception of former Green Party leader, Trevor Sargent. “So it is encouraging to find people who are involved in politics and I would encourage Church of Ireland people to have a higher profile and level of involvement,” he commented. 

Next summer, Archbishop Clarke along with his Catholic counterpart in Armagh, Archbishop Eamon Martin, will take a group from Northern Ireland and the Republic to visit Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin and then on to the Irish peace park in Messines and the Somme. “It’s a kind of pilgrimage to try and draw people together to see the totality. The more we try to do that the more the memories will become wholesome rather than simply partisan,” he said.  

When he talks about allowing the totality to be celebrated together he means that “1916 is part of what has made this country and we need to commemorate it well and properly and constructively. But the First World War was also at its height at that time, particularly the Somme, and we need to think about all that that epitomises, North and South, because we tend to think it is just a Northern Irish thing.” 

People in the South tend to forget that thousands of Irish men lost their lives in that battle and the First World War. 

He also reminds people that some of the greatest nationalists and republicans were members of the Church of Ireland. 

Any survey of Irish history would be “hard pressed” to find nationalists who weren’t protestant. He cites luminaries such as Robert Emmet, Thomas Davis, Wolf Tone, Parnell, Isaac Butt and Henry Joy McCracken and of course Yeats. 

Though republicanism and national independence were later to become “much less a protestant thing” it was he underlines, “never totally expunged” and he believes there is a confidence in the Republic today that recognises there is no antithesis between the two. 

When he talks about the totality and the grey areas, he is referring to people like the poet Francis Ledwidge, who was a nationalist and wrote poetry about the aspirations he and people like Thomas McDonagh had in his poems O’Connell Street and Lament for the Poets of 1916 but who was killed in action at the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I. 

The Archbishop admits he is personally fascinated by the figure of Thomas Kettle, the barrister, nationalist, and campaigner for Home Rule, who was disappointed by the 1916 Rising but never disavowed the people involved in it but also believed that the aims of World War I were righteous. He was killed in the later stages of the Somme in September 1916. “So it is not all clear cut...”, Dr Clarke reflects. 

Historian

As a historian he is trained to look beyond simplistic narratives. “I do think that theologically and socially and politically we should be a big enough to be able to look at the totality and see why it has got us where we are.”

Dublin-born Clarke’s own family history is a “mixed bag”. His father was also Dublin-born and served as a Church of Ireland rector in the capital. But he highlights that he has “Irish, English, Scots, Welsh and Manx blood” and perhaps this has contributed to his tendency to “think of myself as being a mongrel – a very content mongrel; I carry an Irish passport, I regard myself as Irish in a kind of mongrel way”. 

Furthermore, he is “very conscious that the primary identity we have as people of faith is that we are all made in God’s images and likeness – children of God – and that should be the identity we treasure most rather than the other labels we attach to ourselves.” 

Referring to the book he wrote in 2000, And Is It True?, where he explored his theme drawing on First World War poetry, he explains that Christian faith is “very much like a no man’s land in that you are between two trenches – the trench of an absolute fundamentalism and rigidity and a trench which is postmodern relativism, which means that nothing is true of any kind. As people of faith you have to be in-between those two trenches and it is not always a very comfortable place to be.” 

He feels the poetry of the First World War is very powerful in expressing the fragility of how we feel in that no-man’s land. 

Future

One of his hopes for the future is that people in Northern Ireland and the Republic will concentrate on the big vision for society rather than thinking in terms of sectional politics. 

With a general election on the horizon in the Republic and Assembly elections in Northern Ireland, he warns that the “homeless rates are no credit to a modern state” and that the homeless “have been forgotten” perhaps because “there are other things that are much more likely to win you elections”. 

While he welcomes the “slight upswing in the economy” in the Republic, he is still “deeply concerned” that there are a lot of people disengaged from the political process and there are a lot of people who have fallen out of the bottom of the whole social life of the country. The number of food banks is indicative of this and while the recent battle over welfare in Northern Ireland appears to have been won, “it has been a long hard process”. 

Political disengagement and “a lurch to the right” are matters of concern. He is critical of American presidential hopeful, Republican Donald Trump over his “abhorrent” proposal that America should refuse entry to all non-American Muslims. 

Archbishop Clarke warns that Syrian and Iraqi refugees coming to Ireland are not coming as economic migrants. “We can assume that they are coming in fear of their lives,” he observes. 

The Church of Ireland Primate acknowledges that a degree of care must be taken as to who is coming in, but he said he would not want to go down the road of some Eastern European countries which have said they will only take Christian refugees. “If we start to delineate between different forms of refugees – those whom we will relate to because they are Christians and those we won’t relate to – I think we are disgracing ourselves.” 

He warned that a fear many have is that those migrants and refugees who came to Ireland a number of years ago will now be the forgotten ones because all the emphasis would be on those who have come in from the horrors of Iraq and Syria. “There is a danger that the displaced people may actually be those who have been waiting for years for residence.” 

On the issue of faith schools, the Church of Ireland Primate warns that the “notion that denominational education is no longer fit for purpose is more a political notion than actually something that will stand up.” Referring to a recent survey of parents of children in Church of Ireland national schools, he said it showed there was “utter satisfaction” with the system and that people for the most part were “utterly content with the patronage of the bishops”. 

Legitimate place

For the time being, he believes, there is going to be “a legitimate place for schools that are of a denominational hue” and he warned that the notion of sweeping away denominational schools is part of “a secularist agenda”. He adds: “It doesn’t stack up when it comes to people’s use of denominational education or satisfaction with them.”

On Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan’s proposed abolition of Rule 68, Dr Clarke said it wouldn’t “in essence” change an awful lot as the Education Act makes it “very clear” that religious patronage is allowed. “We should be looking at a mixed economy. There will always be a place for schools that are outside the religious sphere in a secular sphere but for the time being there is also going to be a legitimate place for schools that are denominational.” He adds: “I think it should be perfectly possible in a liberal democracy to live with a mixed economy on this matter.”

The head of the Anglican Church in Ireland is also concerned about the push to liberalise abortion warning it could result in a “eugenics culture” which would pressure parents of unborn disabled children to abort. Liberalisation could “begin a process where if there is any risk that a child may be disabled in any way, then a mother will be under pressure to have an abortion.” 

For the Church of Ireland, the life of the unborn and the life of the mother both deserve protection. “We have never ever said there should be an open door to abortion on demand or anything of that kind.” 

But Archbishop Clarke highlights that there are “exceptional times” when a mother’s life is at stake, when “an abortion may sadly be morally justified”, but he added that it was “still a horrifying and a sad thing”. 

On the issue of fatal foetal abnormality, the father of two adult children and one grandchild, underlines that most doctors are “more chary than politicians” on this issue. “We don’t always know for certain that a child may not survive outside the womb for even a short period, and that brief time may sometimes be of great comfort to parents.” 

Dr Clarke underlines that the death of an unborn child is never a matter “of no consequence” and said he was speaking as someone whose wife had had two miscarriages. “It is something I feel quite passionately about having had, in my own personal life, the experience of miscarriages. It is a trauma for both the father and the mother.” 

He warns people against seeing the beginning of life as a ‘happening’ and not a gift, and the end of life as just an ‘event’. “You can be brought to very dangerous places when you get careless about the end of life; it is a very quick jump to get very careless about the beginning of life as well. I think one needs to be extremely careful when you go down a track of saying human life is anything other than a gift. 

“Sometimes at the end of life, when someone is dying, it is very hard to see that this is still a gift of life and at the beginning of life, with the unborn child, sometimes it must be very difficult to believe that this in Christian terms is a gift. But I think once we start to lose that you can be brought to very dangerous places.”

Recalling the death of his wife Linda in a hospice in 2009, and the “wonderful care” she received in the closing days of her life, the Archbishop said it had made him personally very engaged with end of life issues. “One of the things I emphasised when I became Archbishop was my concern with those beginning of life and end of life issues” and he underlines that he is quite happy to be considered “very conservative” on these matters. 

No limits

Liberalism, he suggests, does not mean that “there are no limits to what society may choose to make legal. To me there is a fashion to say that this or that is what liberal democracies do and therefore Ireland must do it, but I think we just need to be ourselves and take a deep breath and say – is this actually the direction in which we want to go?”

As head of the Church of Ireland, Archbishop Clarke is making preparations for 2019, when the Church will mark 150 years since disestablishment. “It is quite a good watershed to take stock of ourselves, to see are we preparing for the future.” 

As part of this strategising for the next 150 years, the Church of Ireland will undertake “an inspection from outside”. According to the Primate, they will ask people from other Churches in Ireland and elsewhere “to look at us dispassionately but also kindly and critically” and identify what “we are doing well and where we are absolutely failing”. 

This objective assessment is intended to be a “dispassionate” critique which is loving but will also “help us to see the areas which are neglected and the areas where we are clearly making a mark and bringing the Gospel into the world.” 

The last census showed that a lot of people who carry the Church of Ireland badge are not really much engaged with the worship of the Church and he describes that as a reality check. 

“We have got to get out of survival mode – of lurching from the immediate to the immediate - and get into a mode where we are confident about where we want to go and what we want to be in the life of Ireland.”